Idol Hands
by Clocktower
Summary: Seras Victoria is sent to investigate a mysterious cargo ship thought to have been lost. Aboard she finds a mysterious idol that will cause trouble for the Hellsing Agency, the Ministry of Magic, and a certain tomb raider. This is a rewrite of an old story since deleted.
1. Chapter 1

What was it about ghost ships and bad weather, Seras Victoria wondered, hearing thunder over the rumble of the armored vehicle's diesel engine as it rolled into the port. It was raining, too. She could smell it over the painted steel and engine grease as the vehicle slowed to pass through a checkpoint. Any moment now she'd be stepping out into the storm.

At her feet was a long, metal box. In the box, lying as if it were a corpse asleep in a coffin, was Seras' Harkonnen cannon. It was a weapon built to ruin tanks, but it also worked rather well on ghouls, vampires, werewolves, and other corporeal abominations. Seras hoped the gun wouldn't be needed, that whatever was wrong aboard the Derleth wasn't her sort of problem.

Please, just let it be a gas leak or something, she thought, as the vehicle came to a full stop. The driver thumped the wall behind him, letting Seras know this was where she was being let off. She pulled the lever that dropped the rear hatch and ran out. The rain wasn't as heavy as she'd expected, but everything was wetter beside the sea.

"You must be the special agent," said a man who likely thought himself hidden in the shadows. Seras' eyes saw him clearly; tall, thin, his watery blue eyes and beak-like nose reminded her of a man she'd once known, and while his tightly cropped blond hair offset the resemblance, she was put off by him all the same.

"I am. Has anyone else boarded the ship since it docked?"

The man squinted, as if he wasn't yet convinced of her identity. "If by 'anyone else' you mean in addition to the team that first went in, no. We've kept the area secure and awaited your arrival as instructed," said the man.

The Derleth loomed over them, a mid-sized cargo ship reported overdue a few weeks prior, presumed lost until that very morning when it had appeared in the harbor and docked itself, its crew ignoring all the proper protocols and refusing to answer any attempts to communicate. The first people to board it were the port authorities; none came back and all attempts to communicate with them failed. Next was the special response team, fearing terrorists. When they vanished, it was thought the ship as contaminated somehow, but then movement was seen on the deck. Only then did someone think to contact the Hellsing Agency.

"I take it you've kept the ship under direct observation?" said Seras.

"Yes, of course. Low-light and heat-sensing cameras have been trained on the vessel ever since the last incident, we've also deployed several rather sophisticated listening devices. Nothing unusual has been detected."

Which itself was unusual, thought Seras, opening the Harkonnen's case and assembling the weapon. Complete, it was taller than she was.

"Are you planning to scuttle the ship?" said the man.

"Hopefully it won't come to that," said Seras, praying that whatever lurked aboard the Derleth was some sort of ghost and that some other secret supernatural-hunting agency or family would be contacted to deal with it.

Ducking under the yellow police tape that had been strung across the gangplank she silently scolded herself for being so lazy. There had been a time not so long ago when she relished battling monsters, despite technically being one herself. She'd had a purpose, a noble one, and she'd been good at it. None of that had changed, but somewhere along the way she'd begun to feel the cost of having a purpose, the weight of its debt.

"Hold on, now," cried the man, whose face still reminded Seras of that man she'd once known. "You're really going in there alone?"

"If I'm not back in ninety minutes, tell your superior to contact mine," said Seras.

Her stomach clenched and her chest tightened as she crossed the gangplank over the gently sloshing seawater. Once she gained the deck, however, the feeling passed. Vampires couldn't cross running water, so the legends held, but Seras had learned that the superstitions governing her undead life were fickle things, likely dependent on how much faith she had in them.

She gave the ship's upper deck a cursory walk-through. As expected, nothing jumped out at her or came running, nor were there any overt signs something was wrong. Once she was inside, her eyes instantly adjusted to the pitch dark as she pulled out her cell phone.

"It's me. I'm on board," Seras said when the call connected.

"Good. What's it look like?"

She wanted to tell Integra that the man on the dock looked like Walter, but didn't. She wanted to tell her that this ship reminded her of the HMS Eagle, but didn't.

"So far, it looks like a ghost ship. I'm told no one's been aboard since the response team went in, and their watch hasn't turned up anything, either. What about your end?"

She thought she heard Integra chuckle. Never a good sign. "I'm fairly certain the Derleth is at least what it claims to be, a freighter carrying non-hazardous materials from the gulf, so don't be afraid to fire your cannon," said Integra. "It might also be smuggling ancient artifacts from various parts of the middle east."

Seras pressed her forehead against the barrel of her Harkonnen, felt the chill of its steel against her room-temperature skin. "What kind of ancient artifacts? Mesopotamian? Babylonian? Assyrian?" she said.

"Does it matter? Find out whatever godforsaken thing is causing all this mess and shoot it. If you can't manage that, take control of the vessel and steer it out to sea. I'll send a chopper to evacuate you, then we'll scuttle the damned thing. The beaches will full of knock-off handbags for a few weeks and we can all get on with our lives."

"Roger that," said Seras, not bothering to hide the resentment in her voice. Integra wouldn't bother upbraiding her for it, anyhow.

Taking a deep, needless, breath, Seras put her memories and resentments aside and bent her mind towards the task at hand, walking down into the bowels of the ship where her instincts told her the problem was likely to be found.

She kept to the stairwell until she could go no lower, then followed a long corridor past several pump rooms, the engine room, and where trash was kept. She sniffed the air, eager for the metallic tang of spilled blood, but all she got was salt, motor oil, and rotting trash.

And then she felt it.

It was like walking into a spider's web, one woven out of slimy, sucker-coated tentacles that tugged at her, pulling her in a certain direction, writhing madly when she stopped or resisted. She touched her phone, considered calling Integra, decided not to, knowing it wouldn't change her orders.

"Just shoot the damn thing, Seras, that's all you have to do," she told herself.

The door at the end of the long hall led to someone's quarters. She felt pulled in that direction, felt certain she'd soon find whatever was causing this mess and blast it. The door was locked, but she was strong enough to pull it open. Inside was a comfortable, filthy suite, not unlike the one at a college dormitory she'd recently been assigned to clear out. Succubi, it seemed, could create ghouls similar to those of vampires except with different appetites. It was an interesting memory to say the least, but Seras suspected she'd prefer doing that one again over whatever this was.

The unseen tentacles were pulling at her hard, guiding her through the L-shaped suite. Around the corner was where someone had spent a lot of time watching television, if the frozen meal containers and empty soda cans left lying around were any indication. Seras had little interest in all that, given what had come to replace the television on its stand.

It was a statue, ten inches high, carved from some dark-colored stone that seemed to shine with a greenish tinge, even in the absence of light. Seras though it a leafless tree, one with scores of thin branches reaching upward, supported by a thick, bent trunk

Into her head like a bullet came a thought; shoot it.

She slid the couch out of her way with her foot, went to inspect the statue. Up close Seras could see it depicted no tree, the branches being closer to tentacles, the trunk a grotesque column bearing eyes, mouths, nostrils, and stranger features.

Shoot it. Shoot it now. Smash it and run.

The unseen tentacles no longer pulled her along, rather they slithered all over her body, making her tingle and cringe. She felt them worm their way up her neck, through her scalp and over her face, seeping through skin and bone to encase her brain, making her thoughts humid and slow.

Shoot it. Smash it. Run.

The sound of her Harkonnen cannon hitting the floor reached her ears, but not her mind. The invisible tentacles squirmed down her body like hot water from a shower, following each of her veins and nerves to their very ends, down to the tips of her fingers, her toes, her breasts. A soft moan escaped her throat as her nipples stiffened. It felt like someone's warm, wet tongue was traveling down her naval, into her slit. She was wet.

What the hell was happening?

She dropped to her knees as her womanhood was invaded and softly set ablaze. The invisible tentacles, like slimy eels, traveled down her long legs while a nest of them burned and writhed in her sex.

Shoot. Smash.

She unbuttoned her over-shirt, ripped open the tee she wore under it, letting her breasts dangle, restrained only by an undersized black bra.

Shoot.

She ripped apart the bra, squeezed her tits until she felt pain. It made it easier for the unseen tendrils to touch her, to fill her up. Hiking up her skirt, she tore the crotch from her panties, plunged her fingers into dripping flesh. It was like pouring gas on a fire, she was engulfed. Knowing exactly where to push, she hit the spot hard, surprised herself by crying out.

Smash.

She raised her eyes to the statue. Her orgasm was so sudden she screamed, helpless to stop the ecstatic fire rushing through her body, following the slimy threads that permeated her mind and soul. She worked her fingers in deeper, trying to squeeze out every last drop of pleasure, but there seemed to be no limit. The harder she pressed the harder she came. Soon, she couldn't manage any motion more complicated than a tight squeeze, yet still the ecstasy flowed.

Her mouth watered. "Please," she said, her voice thick. "Please."

Harder her fingers worked, desperately searching for the bottom of the well inside her, the one that had been taken over and deepened immeasurably by the slimy, dark thing that enveloped her. She threw her head back and screamed, both hands now working to find the bottom of her pleasure, to pinch it off and let her exist again.

Stopping was unthinkable. She knew the ache that would follow and knew she couldn't handle it, that it would consume her and she'd never be able to stop feeding it. "Please," she groaned, falling over onto her back, working her hips in time with her hands, unable to stop coming. "Please, enough, enough!"

The thing that held her mind, body, and soul then relented, just long enough to allow her a revelation, that she belonged to it now, that it would fill her deepest valleys, riverbeds, and tunnels, remaking them according to its own desire. That there would never again be such a thing as "enough."


	2. Chapter 2

Ever since the rainy afternoon Integra Hellsing had discovered masturbation, she'd imagined her arousal in terms of a bubble inside her, one that would grow larger and larger until released. She could soothe it with a cold shower, or ignore it, but every so often it became too big and she'd succumb, stoking her lust until it burst, leaving her feeling spent and ashamed.

Of course there was no such bubble inside her, only a Catholic would think something like that, but here in her dream there certainly seemed to be one. She lay in her bed, naked, her belly swollen as if she were pregnant. It made it hard to reach her clitoris, hard to touch the swelling inside her. She could almost reach the spot, so close.

She had to get up, to find something better than her fingers. All around her bed, like ropes of garlic, hung black tentacles. Some dangled dead like ropes, others writhed like living worms. She was safe from them on her mattress, for now, but she feared they'd soon fall, covering her. She had to get away from them, had to pop the bubble so she could run.

Too late. The black, writing mass above her let loose and fell. She screamed, awoke with such violence that for a full minute she had no idea if she was awake or dreaming. She was naked, covered in sweat with pruned fingers, her sex utterly soaked. She reached for her bed sheet, found it lying on the floor soaked in cold sweat alongside her night clothes.

This was not the first time Integra Hellsing had found herself like this, though her dreams normally involved vampires, not tentacles. She knew what she had to do. From her closet she selected a short, olive-drab robe. Her eye patch had been left on the nightstand. She thought about leaving it, but put it on anyway. Needed to make wearing it a habit.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, she had several glasses of water to replace what she'd lost while turning in her sleep. The bubble inside her was still swollen and sore, but she loathed the idea of going back to that damp bed and taking care of it. Already she felt filthy and ashamed.

With a tall glass of water in hand, she turned to leave the dark kitchen only to find Seras standing beneath the arch of the entryway.

"Seras," she said.

"Sir Integra. I've been meaning to ask you something."

Integra took a sip of water, wishing she had a cigar handy. Evening chats with Seras were often heavy affairs, and that was under normal conditions. Seras had been acting odd ever since her return from the Derleth mission, like a house cat that had been out wandering for too long.

"Make it quick. I'm having some trouble sleeping."

"Why do you go by Sir Integra? Isn't the word for a female knight a dame?"

"Dame Integra Hellsing doesn't have quite the same ring to it as Sir Integra," she said, marveling at how long it had taken for anyone to ask her that question. Her answer wasn't quite the truth, but would serve well enough.

"No, I suppose not," said Seras. "A name really should roll off the tongue, shouldn't it?"

Another sip of water, a secret pinch to see if she was still dreaming. Seras Victoria would be a strange person even if she weren't an orphaned vampire. "I'm going to take a shower, I think," said Integra. "Good evening."

Seras stepped aside to let her pass. Come daylight, Integra decided, they would have a talk. It wouldn't do for Hellsing's remaining trump card to be going crazy.

Integra brought a case of cigars to the washroom with her, planning to have a smoke out on the balcony by her bedroom after she was clean. She turned on the water, disrobed, saw herself in the mirror. Her stomach was flat, but inside her she felt the bubble, big, pink and sore, in dire need of bursting. She fancied she could feel those tentacles all over her body, slithering, pulling. She put two fingers in her mouth, sucked them while watching herself in the mirror. She looked good in an eye-patch, she thought, not that it mattered. Nothing carnal did, not to her. She thought about fingering herself before the mirror, watching herself masturbate. The thought of how filthy she'd feel afterward made her shudder, and she went so far as to touch the bit of yellow hair just above the pink flesh. It was like playing with one's gag reflex, seeing just how far it could be pushed before it became too much.

She took off her eye-patch and stepped into the shower stall. It was safe there, safe to touch and to probe, to make the bubble swell until it burst and left her standing on weakened knees. Soaked, warm, she dove in, sighing at the promise of a release. Deeper she went, harder, leaning against the sturdy shower wall so that it might all be over faster. The longer it took, the deeper the shame at the end. Sometimes she reveled in it, going so far as to suck her musky-smelling fingers dry afterward.

Not this time, not tonight. She wanted it done, wanted the bubble burst and spent so that she might sleep a few hours before sunrise. The water reminded her of the dream tentacles, black, slick, running through her every vein and nerve, pushing the walls of the pink bubble thinner and thinner, to the very edge of bursting.

"Come on, damn it," she muttered under the hiss of the water jets, digging deeper with her fingers, routing out every nerve, every fleshy inch that would bring her closer. Her knuckles were sore, her fingertips pruned.

The bubble inside her had grown impossibly large and pink. She could almost see the purple stretchmarks, knew if she slapped it there would be a sharp sound like a beach ball being hit. Pop, God damn you, pop! she cried wordlessly under the shower jets, ready to get on her knees and pray for an orgasm. She then did just that, in a sense, sliding to her knees to make less work for her legs. "Please, God," she said, alarmed at how much she'd aroused herself. Was it possible to drive one's self mad with lust? Was that one of the secret ways people of her position and stature lost their minds?

The mad, childish thoughts only the isolated could think.

She took a deep breath, kept her fingers busy. The orgasm would come, the need would leave her, it had to. No one had ever gotten stuck like this, had they?

"Please, God, let me cum, please," she said, formulating mad plans for when the hot water ran out. Her fingers weren't cutting it, she needed something more. Where would she find such a thing? The dungeons. Some of the interrogation tools kept down there had other functions, she remembered, perhaps...

The door to the washroom opened. Insanely, Integra was still thinking about the swelling inside her, the intruder a minor distraction. "Who...?"

The curtain was yanked sideways hard enough to dislodge some of the hooks. Standing there was Seras, a curious look on her face, as if she'd stumbled across Integra struggling with a stubborn knot in her shoelace.

"Seras! Get the hell out of here! What's the matter with you?" Integra said, covering her bare eye socket rather than her breasts or genitals.

"I can help," said Seras.

"You're the one who's going to need help, you lunatic!" said Integra. "Get out of here now, or..."

Seras picked up Integra's eye-patch and tossed it to her, looking away during the moment it took to put it on. "I can help you," said Seras.

"Seras..."

Suddenly the vampire was gone, vanished in the span of a blink. All vampires were capable of such theatrics, but Seras rarely employed them, leaving Integra to question the reality of the entire encounter, that was until she switched the water over to cold and filled her body full of lightning. Only when she'd begun to shiver did she turn the water off and step out to dry herself.

She saw herself in the mirror again, hair flat, her bronze skin covered in gooseflesh. She didn't look bloated between her legs, but the swelling was still there, aching to be overwhelmed and gratified.

"Damn it, Seras," Integra hissed, donning her robe, leaving the bright light of the washroom for the black, empty halls of the manor.

Back in her room, she threw a fresh sheet over the bed and lay on it in her night robe. She'd forgotten her cigars in the washroom. She hadn't the energy to finger herself anymore, but try as she might to sleep she couldn't. She closed her eye, knew sleep wouldn't come. She thought about things, all things, sighed when she realized her hips were rocking of their own accord.

When she opened her eye, she was startled, not so much by Seras standing at the foot of her bed, but by the garlands of slick, black tendrils covering the canopy above her bed. A blink and they were gone. Seras remained. She wore her blue skirt with the black leggings. Her shirt was unbuttoned. "You need my help," said Seras. "I can feel it."

"What's going on?" said Integra. "Why are you acting like this?"

Seras looked stricken, as if Integra were refusing chemotherapy. "I need to help you," she said, putting a knee on the bed. "Just let me help."

Nothing Seras said swayed Integra. What slowly parted her legs was the vampire's glacial approach. Integra let her head sink into her pillow, glanced out the window at the cool dark left by a fading moon.

"Very well," said Integra, thinking she must still be dreaming. "Make it quick, and don't speak of it later."

She hoped her tone would make the vampire reconsider, that this could all be written off as a dream or a farce come morning. Just another bizarre episode brought on by months of feeling rootless and alone.

Seras slid soundlessly onto the bed, her cool fingers gently touching Integra's legs, urging their slow parting. Integra remained propped on her elbows, not fully believing this was happening as Seras' head was lowering itself between her thighs. Eager as the vampire was, even her eyes were wide with wonder and disbelief. Seras paused, her face all but touching Integra's womanhood. If she so much as looked up for further permission, Integra vowed she'd kick her off the bed. Instead, the vampire plunged in.

Seras' long tongue was like a cold lance thrust into the center of burning, pink ball that had been swelling all evening. Integra cried out, clutched her bed sheet so hard her bronze knuckles turned white.

Vampire tongues were long, agile things, built to lap every drop of blood from a kill, though many of the books on the subject tended to linger over their more lurid applications. Integra now understood why, as Seras' tongue probed her, lingered over the places that made her squirm, which were many. She'd meant to keep her composure, to sit there silent while the vampire got its licks in, but the sensations were too intense. Integra moaned, gasped, gritted her teeth, strangled and pounded the fabric of her bed sheet, all while Seras' long, powerful tongue ravaged her. She imagined the bloated, pink mass inside her being whipped, crushed, speared, rolled around, pushed into deep, angular corners.

The swollen pinkness bled before it exploded, leaving Integra with just enough time to hiss Seras' name though clenched teeth before everything went dark. When Integra could think again she was still coming, still being lapped up by her starving servant. Integra looked down, failed to pull back a treacherous hand that crawled out to stroke the vampire's yellow hair. The bubble was popped, shredded. Everything was drenched.

After a final, broad lick, Seras pulled up. Her lips and chin glistened in the moonlight. She wiped her mouth with her forearm, the way a peasant might. Did table manners apply when eating pussy? Integra would've chuckled at the thought, but now that the bubble inside her was no longer pressing against her mind, she felt normal again, and in these circumstances that meant she felt ashamed.

It was always the same feeling, as if she were a kitchen appliance coated in weeks of greasy spatter. Sticky, dirty, used and spent. Part of her loved it, part of her didn't quite dare to beg God for relief. Alone, she could revel in it; a private sin, committed so that she might know what sin felt like and thus avoid it in the world outside of her bedroom, where Judgment mattered.

Seras sat on her knees between Integra's legs, her skirt riding high on her thighs. "Is it better?" she said, her face that of a dog hoping for its treat.

"Yes, well done," said Integra, feeling dirty and absurd. "You weren't expecting me to return the favor, I hope?"

"N-no," said Seras. "Of course not, I... just wanted to help."

"And so you have. Now, if it's all the same to you, I'd like to get some sleep."

"Yes, Sir Hellsing," said Seras, oddly formal, even for her. "I'll see you in the morning."

She slid off the bed and left the room, not entirely unaware that Integra was staring at her hips as they swayed. Integra tried not think about Seras, hoping sleep would come soon. It didn't. She rolled around with her thoughts for hours before finally drifting off, into a sea of black, slimy tentacles.


	3. Chapter 3

Hiding in the hedges outside the Hellsing Manor, Hermione Granger looked herself over carefully in the mirror she'd conjured thinking her maid uniform looked fairly modern and convincing, even if it felt like a costume. With a flick of her wand, she vanished the mirror, leaving a faint hollow in the hedge which she did her best to conceal, not that she thought anyone was likely to notice, given the shabby state of the hedges.

It was time. No more waiting. Hermione only hoped Sir Integra Hellsing was an easier person to please than people made her out to be, not because she feared for her job as a maid, but for her career as a spy for the Ministry of Magic.

With her wand strapped to her thigh beneath her skirt, Hermione walked briskly down the gravel path to the front door of the stately and imposing Hellsing Manor. The sun was on its way down; an odd time to be meeting a new employer, but Hermione had been told to expect oddness from the Hellsings. At the door, she used the brass knocker as she'd been instructed to do. The door opened instantly, as if Sir Integra Hellsing had been waiting behind it.

Bronze skin, long yellow hair, dressed in an olive-drab paramilitary suit, Integra Hellsing would have made for a striking visual even without the eye patch. Hermione bowed in greeting, her eyes lingering over Integra's slender figure. "Good day, ma'am. Hermione Granger, at your service."

Integra smiled in a way that made Hermione certain she'd just broken some obscure rule of etiquette known to none outside the nobility. "Come, I'll show you to your quarters," said Integra, conspicuously not bothering to introduce herself. "I understand there's been a bit of a mix-up with your things, but they should arrive in the morning."

That was fine with Hermione. So long as she had her wand, she held everything she needed. Or so she thought, until the instant she put a foot over the manor's threshold and nearly went stumbling backward out of the house.

"Are you alright?" said Integra.

"Just tripped a bit is all," said Hermione, recovering her wits if not all of her nerves. The air in the house had felt impossibly thick the moment Hermione stepped through the door, almost tangible, but then the sensation vanished, leaving her with impression that whatever she'd felt hadn't disappeared at all, but had retreated instead.

Integra was glaring at her. A mad image flashed inside Hermione's mind, of Integra standing behind her with a riding crop, correcting her. The thought made her toes curl.

"Be careful, it's an old house," said Integra, her expression softening as she led the way into the kitchen. "I trust you can find your way around this room on your own? I've been eating MREs since my previous butler left my service and I'm getting rather tired of them."

"I think I can manage," said Hermione, who'd planned on using sorcery to fill in the blanks on her housekeeping resume. Another image came before her eyes, of her being chained to a dungeon wall, of Integra holding a long, red candle dripping hot wax. "Will you be taking a meal this evening?"

"It's late, so no. And don't worry about breakfast, I'm never up for it," said Integra.

More images. Hermione nude, chained by a collar around her neck to the foot of a large post bed. The carpet was soft against her skin, easy on the welts. She watched Integra on the bed, coupling with something she couldn't quite picture.

Integra took her though the entire house, showing off every bedroom, sitting room, hallway, and gallery. Each room brought some new vignette to assail Hermione's mind, each one more lewd and degrading than the last. She wanted to stop and linger on them, but the tour kept on until finally they came to Integra's office, a huge room with a massive window overlooking an unkempt orchard. Integra bid Hermione to sit in a chair across from her desk. Instead, Hermione almost kneeled, catching herself at the last second so it looked like a stumble.

"Are you sure you're alright?" said Integra.

"Yes, ma'am, sorry. New shoes, you see, still breaking them in."

Integra's eyebrow went up and Hermione felt certain she was about to be whipped. It was mad thought to have, one that made her toes curl and her underwear moisten. It took some effort to peel her eyes away from Integra, to get a good look around the room. There wasn't much to it, some paintings, a few maps, a bookcase, all of it tucked away in a perpetual shade of evening.

"Right," said Integra, plucking a tiny brown cigar from a silver case and sticking it between her lips. "There's a few things you should know about this place before the sun sets."

"Oh?" said Hermione, genuinely curious about how Sir Integra Hellsing planned to spin her family's mission to a civilian.

"Do you believe in... the supernatural?"

The dungeon again, Hermione naked and chained, her chest and stomach covered in red wax. She swore she wasn't a witch as the rack tightened. "The supernatural? No, ma'am, I suppose I don't," said Hermione, trying to sound as though admitting to a failure since she didn't know what answer Integra wanted to hear.

Integra produced a silver lighter from her pocket, lit her cigar. The smoke hit Hermione's nose and she stiffened at the sudden though of Integra putting the cigar out on her nipple. She had enjoyed a kinky thought or two in her private time, even a few featuring women, but these were something else, more intense, visceral. Her toes curled tight, she needed a change in panties.

"I suppose that's for the best," said Integra. "As I mentioned before, this is an old house. Like any old house, it has its quirks. Past housekeepers have reported seeing things... ghosts, I suppose. I don't believe in any of it myself, but I'll admit the place can give off certain, shall we say, impressions."

"Impressions?" said Hermione, clearly picturing herself standing nude in the middle of the room, blindfolded while Integra circled her, inspecting her as if she were a slab of beef.

"Yes, impressions. They're just that, impressions."

Hermione, who'd known damn well there was something supernatural in the house, was now even more disturbed by it. "Of course, ma'am. I've worked in a few manors like this one before, you're right, they all have their quirks."

This seemed to satisfy Integra, who took a long drag from her cigar as she took some papers from her desk. Hermione felt something tight around her neck, something made from leather. She rubbed her throat as Integra slid the papers across her desk and bid Hermione to read and sign them. They were nondisclosure agreements, each stricter and scarier than the last, enforceable by multiple courts across the globe. Hermione fought the urge to claw at her neck, repeatedly telling herself the feeling wasn't real, it was being put there by something.

When the papers were all signed and slid back over to Integra, the leather strap around Hermione's throat released. She gasped for the air she didn't need.

"Are you sure you're alright?" said Integra, stuffing the papers back in their drawer.

"Fine, ma'am, sorry. A bit tired, I suppose."

"I'll show you to your quarters, then," said Integra.

Hermione felt nude following Integra through the gloomy halls to the other side of the compound where Victorian wallpaper gave way to gray stone. Nude and being led along by a chain attached to her nipples.

She prayed there would be a shower in her room, one that blasted ice cold water.

Whatever Hermione had felt at the front door was waiting for her in her quarters. As before, it withdrew, but more deliberately this time, as if it had wanted her to know it was nearby. It had wanted her to feel it.

The room was small, stuffy. Someone had lived in it for a long time, but it was clear no one had called it home for several months, maybe longer. There was a bed, a stuffed chair, bookshelves, a television.

"There are two more things you should be aware of," said Integra, standing in the doorway, blowing her cigar smoke into the hall. Hermione imagined the warm smoke hitting her in the face, filling her lungs. "One, my other servant, Seras Victoria, keeps odd hours. She's responsible for security around here, so you'll likely see her patrolling the halls if you're up at night. You're not required to speak to her, and you can count on her to investigate any noises you might hear. Second, at the end of this hallway is the stairwell to the basement. You don't need to clean down there, and the staircase isn't safe."

Hermione nodded, smiling. "Right, ma'am. Not to worry, I don't wander much after dark."

"All for the best," said Integra. "Well, good evening. I'll see you in the morning."

Some of the smoke from Integra's cigar lingered on in the room. Hermione breathed it in, felt it enter her veins through her lungs and cling to her brain. When she finally blinked and shook her head clear, she found herself on her knees, skirt hiked above her waist, her fingers deep inside her pussy. She gasped and straightened herself out, feeling violated even though it was her own slick fingers she brought to her lips and sucked clean.

She hiked up her skirt again, drew her wand. Waiving it around her head she murmured an incantation, one she hoped would at least provide some respite from the mental bombardment she was under. She waited, noticed no difference in her thoughts or feelings.

Wand out, she used a spell to summon a book from the nearby shelf. "The Carnacki Files." Hermione had been expecting something about vampires, but she supposed the Hellsings didn't confine their pest removal work to bloodsuckers. She concentrated on the book with the same intensity she'd always mustered in her school days, soon found herself reading about a stone floor with lips. Her ward seemed to have worked, though not completely. She was thinking of the basement and what sorts of medieval torture devices were kept down there. Perhaps a rack, one she could be stretched over and whipped, licked.

She set the book aside and cast another warding spell on herself. It almost failed, so consumed was she by the image of herself standing in the middle of a room, naked, bound head to foot in silken ropes, trying to stand in one place while all around her seethed a mass of black tentacles.

This wouldn't do, she thought. She had to make her move tonight, no, this very instant. With her wand hidden up her sleeve, she went into the hallway and started for the basement, doubting the stairs were the real danger. The basement door was around the corner, ancient oak planks held together by black iron straps. She was assailed by vivid images of herself sitting naked across a steel cavaletto, her juices dripping down the sides as she ground against it in ecstasy and pain.

What in the name of Merlin was Hellsing keeping in the basement?

The oak-iron door was locked. A simple spell opened it, a simpler one made the tip of Hermione's wand glow, giving her just enough light to make her way down the creaking wooden steps. The basement, she soon realized, was more in line with her recent visions than a proper basement. Hermione followed a stone corridor away from the stairs, using the bizarre thoughts popping into her head as a guide. The more vivid, sexual, and degrading, the images, the closer she figured she was getting to their source.

Her common sense told her to flee, to summon backup from the Ministry, to tell them there was powerful dark magic at work in the Hellsing Manor that needed to be neutralized, but the visions, terrible as they were, pulled her further into the gloom. She stalked past unlit cells, sound-proof rooms with drains in the floor, walls lined with torture devices designed in the middle ages and manufactured recently with stainless steel, all the while thinking about what it would be like to be bound in the middle of one of those rooms, left helpless against being ravaged by creatures drooling in the shadows.

Thoughts that should have sent her running instead called her further down, to the room where the thing sat, waiting. The air was impossibly heavy, like gelatin. It was hard to draw breath. Her wand-light was dimmer here, but it showed her the source of it all well enough, an obsidian sculpture resting on wooden altar at the back of the circular room. She walked across the ceremonial red carpet towards it, trying to puzzle out what it was supposed to be. A tree, perhaps, one with scores of twisting branches. No, not branches. Not a tree. Something built for the sole purposed of reaching out, of spreading. A slime mold gone sentient and mad.

She didn't remember kneeling in front of it, didn't remember tearing open the front of her shirt, of pulling up her skirt to reach her wet pussy. She couldn't remember ever being this slick, this much in need. It was like rubbing a lump of rubber for all she could feel. She fingered herself harder, nothing she did provided any relief.

"Please," she heard herself whispering.

Her wards were broken, her mind unprotected from the torrent of alien images washing over her, their fountainhead only a few feet away. She saw herself bound with leather cords, her feet pulling against a noose around her neck while something squirmed happily between her legs. She rubbed herself harder with her fingers, probed deeper, searching for any bit of flesh with nerve endings.

"Please," she moaned, begging the black, twisted idol she knew was doing this. Begging it not to stop, but to let her be satisfied.

A tentacle came for her out of the shadows, caressing her buttocks before burrowing into her, making her squeal. She felt it sliding deep inside her, winding its way through her guts, pushing past sphincters not meant for that direction of passage. It wound its way around her stomach, coming up into her throat and out her mouth.

She returned to reality gagging, still kneeling before the idol with wet fingers and a dripping pussy. No monstrous tendril threaded her innards. "Please, just end it," she said, not caring what the dark object did to her so long as it brought an end to the numb torment between her legs.

"Weren't you told to stay out of here?" came a woman's voice from directly behind her.

Hermione turned, her legs splayed apart as she looked up at what had to be Seras Victoria. Tall, leggy, with a mess of straw-blond hair, she was Hermione's age, at least physically. The red tint of her eyes held Hermione's gaping stare.

"W-what's... happening," said Hermione.

"I'm not sure," said Seras, her voice far away. "Sir Integra won't be happy to hear about this."

Her mind too fogged to truly think, Hermione said the first thing on her tongue. "Please, you don't have to tell her."

"Well, maybe," said Seras. "Stand up."

Hermione got to her feet, trying to block Seras' view of her still-glowing wand.

"What's that?" said Seras, pointing.

"Nothing. A flashlight," Hermione said, dumbly watching Seras pick up her wand and examine it, looking for an off-switch.

"I don't think you're a maid at all," said Seras, trying to wipe the light off the wand tip with her fingers.

On her knees still, Hermione tried to conceal the fact she was still touching herself, though it was to no avail. The air, so thick, like a warm, wet blanket. This had to be a dream, one of the weird ones.

The door opened, closer than Hermione remembered it being, and in came the smell of stale cigar smoke and gunpowder. "What is the meaning of this?" Integra said.

Seras' body immediately stiffened and she raised her free hand in salute. "Sir Integra, I've captured a spy. I think."

Integra snapped her fingers and held out her hand for the wand, which Seras turned over, still glowing. Hermione thought her wand was about to be broken in two, but then Integra seemed to completely lose interest in it.

"How rude of you, Seras; interrupting our new maid during her private time," said Integra.

Seras flushed red. "S-sir? That's clearly a wand..."

"Hush. Let's allow her to finish."

A long silence followed, during which Hermione remembered her shirt was open, her lower half exposed. The air, so heavy and thick, had made her feel clothed, but now it was doing the opposite, exposing her on a molecular level. It was a sick, delicious feeling.

A knowing, lewd smile wiped the wonderment from Seras' face, as if she suddenly remembered she and Integra were both in on some conspiracy. "Right, how rude of me. Carry on, then."

"Hermione," said Integra. "Well? We haven't got all night."

Convinced this was certainly a dream or another vivid hallucination, Hermione pressed her fingers into her pussy, trying in vain to trigger any sense of pleasure or release. A sad, futile effort, especially now that she had an audience.

"Come on now, put some effort into it," said Integra. "You went against my explicit instructions to be here and do this, best make it worthwhile."

Hermione sat back, spread her legs so her watchers could see her wet fingers working uselessly between the clefts of her womanhood. She focused on the stone floor in front of her, glancing up every other moment to heighten the sense of humiliation and shame she felt. Why was she doing this? Why was this happening? The artifact behind her, no doubt. She could sense its presence growing, looming over the back of her, tall as a tree.

"Seras, it looks like our new housekeeper is having some trouble managing her affairs," said Integra.

"Looks that way, ma'am," said Seras.

"Sort her out, won't you?"

Hermione stopped masturbating. Her heart hammering, she looked up at Seras, terrified. She scooted back a few centimeters as the woman stepped closer. Hermione's toes curled when Seras got down on her hands and knees and crawled between her legs. Gently, she took Hermione's hand and brought her wet fingers to her mouth.

The woman's tongue felt strange. Granted, Hermione hadn't experienced her digits being fondled by many people's tongues before, but she didn't think they were supposed to be this long, this agile, or this powerful. She quivered as Seras let them go and dropped her attention to the wet, pinkness laid out before her. Seras lapped Hermione like a dog at first, just to taste her. The difference between the woman's tongue and her own fingers was immediate. A fire had been lit below her navel and she couldn't stop it from burning hotter. She nearly came the moment Seras' tongue rolled around her clitoris.

"Finish her quickly, Seras," said Integra.

"She won't last much longer, ma'am" Seras said before tickling Hermione's slit with the tip of her lengthy tongue.

Every muscle in Hermione's body was on fire, as if it had all been dry tinder before, now touched by a blowtorch. Seras tongue slid deep inside her, swelling, stretching her out, electrifying and scorching her nerves all at once, turning her brain to ash. She couldn't remember where she was. The floor of her room? She wasn't a dirty little maid being punished, she was a dirty little spy for the Ministry being punished, interrogated, degraded. She'd tell her captors anything, anything her master wanted to know, just as long as the fire never stopped burning.

When the smoke cleared from her mind, she was lying flat on the stone floor, half-naked, glistening with sweat. Seras sat between her knees, licking her wet lips like a cat that had finished a meal. "I think she passed out," said Seras.

"She certainly did," said Integra. "Quick work, too."

"Too easy," said Seras, wiping her chin on the back of her forearm. "I want to do it again."

Hermione propped herself up on her elbows, feeling as if she'd been gnawed in half. "Please, I can explain," she said.

"Oh, you will. In the morning, perhaps. Seras, have your fill of her then get back on patrol. If you do it correctly, there won't be any need to leave her under guard," said Integra.

"Yes, ma'am," said Seras, grinning from ear to ear. Her irises had turned blood-red and her long, powerful tongue was dancing behind her pointed teeth.

"Vampire," said Hermione.

"Hmm. Maybe more than that, now," said Seras, glancing at the idol looming behind Hermione, before going back to feed.


	4. Chapter 4

Sneaking into the Hellsing Manor was a far simpler matter than Lara Croft ever could have hoped. An easy toss of the grappling hook, a few seconds scampering up a stone wall, a short drop and she was in the back courtyard, her only company a dry fountain, its marble blazing white in the moonlight. Beyond it, a dark cleft in the hedgerows.

The trick to moving through the dark unseen and unheard was to be quick. Dressed in a pair of shorts over a dark blue one-piece, Lara made almost no sound as she darted through the gap in the hedges. She'd spent the morning studying drone photos of the compound and had memorized the sequence of lefts and rights she would have to take to reach the gardener's shack.

At the end of the hedge maze, with the shack in sight, Lara stopped, listened. From her pocket she took a stone ankh on a leather cord and hung it over her neck. The ankh was older than the civilization associated with it, the cord far younger. Lara didn't want to know anymore about the leather than she already did and loathed having it against her skin, even as she hoped it was authentic.

The shack was a squat little building with a peaked roof. Lara caught the edge and hoisted herself onto the gray shingles, cursed when she saw how shabby they were. Between the lax security and state of disrepair, Lara Croft was embarrassed for the Hellsing Manor. A mansion owner herself, she expected better.

The gardener's shack was an add-on to the mansion itself, with a window right above the roof. Lara was used to trespassing in places where one didn't necessarily have to be quiet or gentle, and so prying open the mansion window without breaking it or making noise was indeed a challenge, as was slipping through once the window was open, but she managed. It was official, she was a burglar. The thought of what might befall her in this house was nothing short of arousing. On top of the usual worry about getting killed was the notion of what might happen should be she be captured. A fate worse than death in some ways. All the more exciting.

A few steps down the gallery hall and the ankh started twitching, as if some unseen hand were fumbling with it. Lara held it against her neck, cold as ice. A bizarre image flashed in her mind, of herself with both her pistols drawn, rubbing one against her crotch while sucking on the barrel of the other. She shook the scene out of her head and smiled. She'd been right to bring the ankh.

The manor was a dark, musty place, filled with things seemingly designed to gather dust. Lara suspected what she was after was in the basement, and so made her way downstairs, the ankh dancing and growing colder the nearer she got. It worked as a kind of compass, steering her in the right direction. Clearly something thought Lara's defenses would be easier to overpower if she were closer.

Clearly something was underestimating her.

Lara found the door to the basement, found the padlock a simple thing to defeat using a small pair of bolt cutters. The basement was pitch black. Lara took from her pocket a pair of green-tinted spectacles that would give her fairly decent night-vision for half an hour, twice as much time as she'd need. The basement was in fact a dungeon, and for the first time since she'd arrived Lara was a little jealous.

The ankh hopped frantically about her neck as she entered a long, stone hallway lined with wooden doors. Classic dungeon cells, Lara thought, thinking of all the people she'd like to have thrown in some cells of her own. While she suspected her goal lie behind the door at the end of the hall, she couldn't resist looking through the rectangular slots on the others. Most cells were empty, but the last one on the right contained something interesting. A young woman with bushy brown hair, strapped to a rack, her legs pulled up and spread out as if she were on display. Nude, she'd been blindfolded and gagged.

Someone's plaything.

People with toys like that didn't leave them alone for long, not after the sun went down, which meant Lara had to hurry up. The moment she stepped foot inside the room at the end of the hall the thing that has been fiddling with her ankh stopped playing and tried to tear it off her neck. The leather cord held like an iron chain, proving it was indeed authentic, to Lara's queasy satisfaction. She turned off her night-vision spectacles, for two massive candles on either side of an altar provided the room with what little light it needed.

On the altar sat an obscenity, one Lara had gone through a great deal of trouble to acquire, only to have the damned thing stolen during shipping. It had grown since she last saw it. It now stood as high as a Christmas tree, far too big for the leather sack she carried, the one covered in odd runes and sorcerous markings.

"That's not good," she whispered, before the candles flickered madly as if touched by some unseen wind.

Lara froze at the sound of a round being chambered behind her. "Don't move," said a woman.

"Seras Victoria, I presume," said Lara. "Former patrol officer with the Cheddar Police Department, deceased."

"Yes, that's me!" said Seras, cheerfully. "I mean, how do you know that? And who in blazes are you?"

Lara took a risk and turned around. She'd been hoping not to meet Integra Hellsing's pet vampire, but was prepared all the same.

"Who I am isn't important. What matters is that you have something that belongs to me. I've come to get it."

Seras held a pistol in a teacup grip, aiming at Lara's head. Typical, cocky vampire. Lara let her body go slack. Vampires predicted movement in part by reading minds. The less thinking involved in fighting them, the better. Had Seras been aiming for center-mass like a well-trained human, she might've hit Lara when she fired. Instead she was aiming for right between Lara's eyes, and so her bullet went high and hit the obsidian blasphemy growing between the guttering candles.

Lara let instinct do all the work when she drew her pistols and fired them at Seras, filling the vampire's torso with half a dozen rounds.

"Oh, you ruined my uniform!" Seras said, looking down her blue shirt at all the blood.

Rolling to her feet, Lara kept her pistols raised, pointed at the vampire's heart and head. The first three rounds in each pistol's magazine were lead with copper jackets, the remaining two-dozen were cast from silver and blessed by a priest.

"Come on now, let's not do this," said Seras, still upset over her shirt. "I have to buy my own clothes, you know, and I don't really get paid, the bullets hurt, and I think I shot..."

She looked for a moment as if she'd forgotten something. Plenty of time for Lara to make a conscious judgment call and fire. The bullets hit Seras in the hands, breaking bones and shredding flesh as they came apart inside her. The rest of Lara's rounds hit Seras' legs, destroying muscles, tearing tendons. One round did find Seras' skull, a glancing hit that avoided damaging any serious amount of brain matter.

Seras hit the floor with a wet thud. Lara ran out the door, knowing she didn't have much time before the vampire was mobile again. She remembered her way out of the basement and didn't bother with the night-vision glasses. The air was thick, hot. Someone had turned up the heat. She felt for the cold stone against her neck, found it gone. It must've slipped off during the fight. Lara saw herself in her mind's eye, kneeling before the woman she'd seen in the dungeon, licking her pussy.

Don't think, run. Let instinct do the work.

She cried out and stumbled. She imaged running through something like Velcro, tried not to imagine instead a million sharp cockroach legs all kicking and clawing. She no longer feared the vampire catching up to her. If she saw Seras again, surely it meant she'd been too slow to avoid the black idol's contamination.

Faster she went, up the basement stairs, towards the nearest exit, whatever it might be. She found herself in a courtyard, the wall marking the edge of the grounds meters away. Faster. Not a step backward, not a glance. Lara didn't have time to use her grappling hook to scale the wall, instead she put everything she had into one powerful leap and caught the edge with the tips of her fingers.

While they may have looked soft and supple, Lara Croft's hands were powerful iron hooks capable of not only supporting her body's weight, but of pulling it straight upward until she could shift her buttocks and legs over her head and roll over the top of the wall.

She wasn't where she'd planned to come out, but couldn't take the time to reorient, and so she bolted into an unkempt orchard, praying she'd lose at least one of her pursuers between the branches.

XXX

Three night's had passed since the intruder. Seras had completely healed from her wounds and now sat in the back of an armored personnel carrier on its way to a warehouse outside London.

"What a life," she said to herself, looking down at her hands, marveling at how quickly they'd healed. While she'd been turned by a first rate vampire, her powers were nothing compared to what his had been. Bullets hurt, silver bullets blessed by a priest hurt more. Seras would still be in her coffin, healing, had it not been for the feast Hermione had provided.

Better than blood, Seras thought, remembering how she'd removed the blindfold from the captured witch, all to better see the mix of terror and desire in her eyes. She'd removed the gag, too, wanting to hear Hermione beg, first to cum, then to stop cumming. The sight, the sound, the flavor of the woman all came together to make a meal better than anything Seras' had ever devoured.

She should focus on the mission at hand. There wasn't much to think about, really. Reports of bodies, murders, missing investigators, the usual hallmarks of a vampire or ghoul attack. Seras hoped to have everything wrapped up quickly, but knew better than to get careless. That's what had happened at the mansion, in the room.

The room where she'd first had Hermione.

She could still taste the witch on her tongue. It helped her wonder what having both Hermione and Integra would be like, how they'd blend. She imagined them both laid out for her, each eager to be chosen first.

The vehicle came to a stop. Seras picked up her Harkonnen cannon and she got out. The APC was stopped at the outlet of a long, gravel access road. Standing in the middle of it was rotund security guard, who merely gestured with his thumb to the immense black building behind him. Seras was impressed as she walked past him. Usually his type had some wisecrack to make about such a big gun being carried by such a petite woman.

Forcing open a steel door into the warehouse, she was assailed by the stench of blood, most of it beef, enough to almost cover the scent of human carnage. Much of the gore was piled in the center of the warehouse, a large open area bounded by high shelves and containers. Someone had gone all-out, she thought, seeing bits of white bone, chunks of red meat, all scattered around an intricate design drawn on the cement floor in blood.

"Bloody wankers," Seras said, stepping into the blood circle. Normally not a smart thing to do, but whomever had made this one clearly didn't know what they were doing, even Seras could tell. For one, it was all cow blood. No good. For another, there were too many lines, too many symbols, it was all just too much.

All too much.

The realization came too late. Her bones and muscles turned to lead. She fell on her knees, her chin against her chest; she was barely able to support her spine. There was human blood on the floor, alright, enough to make a proper trap circle, one hidden with cow blood. A lamp came on above her head, bathing her in harsh, yellow light. Someone walked behind her, picked up the Harkonnen and tossed it into the shadows.

"I have to admit, I was expecting you to be more of a challenge," said the burglar from three nights before. Seras strained to lift her head and get a good look at her. Long, shapely legs, tight, curvy hips, a chest that made Seras want to ask where she bought her bras.

"W-who are you?" Seras said, finding it hard to speak.

The woman drew one of her pistols, touched the muzzle to Seras' lips. She could smell the silver bullet in the chamber, a whiff of oblivion. "Lara Croft, at your service," said Lara. "How have things been for you lately, Seras?"

Lara pressed the gun into Seras' mouth. She let it past her teeth, held it still with her tongue. The sour taste of the metal made her salivate.

"Whad do ooh meand?" Seras said, her body too leaden and heavy to properly shudder.

"What's your life been like since you took that stolen bit of property into the Hellsing Manor?"

Seras thought for a moment. "Fide, I guess," she said.

"Fine? You mean you've always enjoyed carnal relations with Integra Hellsing? You've always kept a sex slave in the manor's dungeons?"

"Wadt?" said Seras, fighting the urge to suck the pistol as if it were a cock, one she'd rather not have cum in her mouth.

Lara sighed. "I don't suppose you found the ankh I dropped during our little tussle. No? I didn't think so. It wouldn't want you picking that up, now would it?"

"Whad are you 'alking gahbout?" Seras said, her eyes watering from the gun metal's acrid flavor. It was making her entire GI tract, from lips to anus, quiver.

Lara pushed the gun deeper, triggering Seras' gag reflex. She fought it hard, her eyes watering, praying Lara's finger wouldn't jostle the trigger too hard. Lara kept pushing, until Seras was on her back. "Really, you don't know what I'm talking about?" said Lara, taking the gun from Seras' mouth, positioning herself between Seras' legs.

"No, I don't," said Seras, her mouth free of the gun but not its threat. She still felt as if she weighed as much as a building.

Lara hitched up Seras' skirt, pulled aside her panties and pressed the wet muzzle of the pistol against the soft, moist flesh of her pussy. "Do you like what I'm doing to you right now? Do you feel humiliated, degraded, afraid? Don't answer, I know you do. I also know you love it."

Seras felt the gun inside her. The iron sight hurt, but the rest of it made her pussy tighten, made her so wet she could feel beads of moisture tickle her buttocks. "Yes," Seras said. "Yes, alright, I like it. What's your point?"

"The black idol you keep in the basement, the object you stole from the Derleth. It's not just a bad bit of sculpture, it contains... I suppose it's more accurate to say it channels, a consciousness."

The orgasm inside her was budding quickly, feeding off the slow pumping action Lara was giving the pistol. She knew she'd cum hard, hard enough to jostle the gun so it went off. Her pussy should have been drier than old burlap, but it felt like a waterfall down there. Seras liked guns, but she didn't like them this much. Something was very, very wrong.

"What's... what's happening..." Seras said.

"I'm fucking you with my pistol. I want to see you cum knowing it might go off."

"You're sick," Seras said.

"Yes, and so are you. So is your master and that woman you've got captive. The idol is making us sick."

"That's got nothing to do with it," Seras said through gritted teeth, her eyes tightly shut, all in a vain effort to hold off the orgasm. Rarely had Seras ever felt so separate from herself. She opened her eyes, long enough to see Lara take up a strange, leather bag covered in arcane symbols. The seal she was under left her powerless to keep it from being pulled over her head. Rather than be smothered, she felt like she was breathing air for the first time in weeks.

"Is that better?" said Lara as Seras gasped for air she didn't need.

It all fell on her at once, the weeks of deviant sex acts, the perverted urges eagerly gratified, both her own and those of the others. Sullied to her core, she wanted nothing more than to shrivel up and expire, but then she remembered the gun between her legs, holstered in her vagina, and the fog came creeping back. "Better," said Seras. "Keep... keep going, please."

"Guess the sack isn't worth what I paid for it after all," muttered Lara, pulling it off Seras' head and setting it on her chest. "Hurry up and cum. When you're spent, we can talk."

She worked the gun in and out, using her other hand to massage the sweet spot beneath Seras' hood. Seras felt the orgasm build and build, fed by the hardness of the gun, the threat of it going off, the strangeness of the whole scene. The last of the tension holding her together broke and she fairly exploded. For a moment Seras thought the gun had gone off, the massive trauma from the burning, silver bullet tearing through her being interpreted by her brain as the height of ecstasy. Moments after it peaked she was aware again. The gun hadn't fired, she was lying in a puddle of her own fluid, her pussy still eagerly hugging the gun inside it, as if sucking out every inch of bliss the cold metal object had stored away.

Lara gingerly pulled the gun out, licked the barrel clean before sliding it back inside its real holster. "How are you feeling?" she said.

"Better, I suppose," said Seras. "I want to know what you taste like."

"Time and some distance may help," said Lara. "I'm going to break the seal so you can move."

She smudged some of the bloodstains on the floor with her foot. Suddenly Seras found herself able to move. She got to her feet slowly, seeing from Lara's small, tense movements that she didn't fully trust her yet. That was alright, Seras thought, she didn't trust herself either, given all she could think about was what Lara Croft would taste like later.


	5. Chapter 5

Where the ceiling had been now protruded an enormous eye. Unblinking, its great pupil the size of a dinner plate, it focused on the two in its thrall. They didn't know why they'd both come to this room, neither could say why they locked lips and dueled each other with their tongues. The bronze-skinned one with the long, yellow hair took great pleasure in dominating the other, pushing the bushy-haired one's tongue back into her mouth, sucking it back in as she pleased.

Neither paid any mind to the swimming pool sized eye above their heads as they removed their clothes. The one with the yellow hair had brought a long, rubber phallus which she held while the bushy-haired got down on her knees to lubricate it with her mouth. When both ends of the phallus were slick with saliva, the yellow-hair slid it between the others legs as she lie on the floor. The bushy-hair whimpered, such was the intensity of the feeling. The blond was quieter when inserting her end of the phallus into her own womanhood, but once the two were joined and working their hips in proper rhythm, she grunted and moaned with abandon, making herself think of a rutting pig.

The eye never blinked, but it did quiver as it focused on every small movement the creatures beneath it made. The sensations they were producing in themselves interfered with their breathing, caused them to vocalize against their will. Still, they craved more of it, touching their sensitive breasts to heighten their arousal and the depth of pleasure they felt.

At first they faced each other, fondling themselves, licking their breasts as their hips worked against each other to press pleasure from the phallus they shared. Each felt exposed, shamed, though the more they did this with each other the more familiar, the more numb they became.

"You grunt like a pig when you cum," said the one called Hermione.

The one called Integra nearly did cum at those words. Filthy, base language, it made everything all the more wretched and delicious.

"You cum when I grunt like a pig," said Integra.

It was too much for them to stand any longer. They turned themselves so their buttocks could slap against each other and went hard for a long time, the eye above them rolling in ecstasy as they made each other cum, both uttering guttural noises of the deepest gratification.

Seras woke up feeling cold and sore even though she lay in the middle four poster bed with a cloud for a mattress, one imported from Heaven.

She was cold because she didn't have a heart beat. She was sore because she'd spent most of the previous night hanging by her arms from a ceiling, writhing as she was kissed and sucked by the sweet lips of Lara Croft.

Where was Lara? Where were her clothes? Loathe as she was to leave the bed, she did so, only to be met at the door by Lara herself, dressed in a short night robe of purple silk. "Good morning," said Lara. I brought you something to wear while your clothes are in the wash."

She handed Seras a black version of the robe she had on. It felt wonderful against Seras' skin, especially against her breasts. Her nipples popped against the fabric, grew even harder as she crossed her arms over her chest.

Lara, by deliberate contrast, loosened her robe, showing off most of what she had to offer. "I find fighting its influence every waking moment to be rather exhausting," she said. "I like to pick my battles."

Seras let her arms fall, let herself enjoy being ferociously eye-fucked by Lara.

"What's going on? What is that thing in the basement and how is it doing this to us?"

Lara smiled coyly and bid Seras to take one end of a loveseat by the window, over which was drawn a heavy, black curtain. "Do you know what I do for a living, Seras?"

"Er, no," said Seras, who thought she'd read an article in a magazine once about the famous Lara Croft, but hadn't been able to recall many details beyond the fact she was a figure of some controversy.

"I'm a collector," said Lara. "Some might say thief, bandit, or tomb raider, but most of what I find I turn over to the British Museum. I only keep things you might describe as troublesome."

"Troublesome, that's the word for it," said Seras, remembering how loud she'd screamed when she'd finally cum after hours of the most delicious, sucking agony.

"There's a room in this house I had built specifically for that object I'm sure you thought you were confiscating," said Lara. "The room is lined with certain materials and built in such a away that the idol's reach won't extend far outside the walls. I might have suffered some unusually frisky dreams while sleeping here, but nothing I couldn't live with."

Seras' eyes had fallen to the shaded cleft between Lara's breasts. She wanted to nuzzle them, to kiss them each in turn. "If we get the thing inside that room, will this all stop?"

"That's the hope. The idol is a conduit, a link between the world we can perceive to another one we can't. There's something on the other side of it reaching in, influencing things."

"A demon, sounds like," said Seras.

"Something along those lines, I suppose," said Lara. "Though no amount of holy water would ever bother it."

"Sounds like someone I used to know," said Seras, sadly.

"Right. Well, anyway, I'd planned to slip the thing into a special pouch, the one I had over your head for a bit while..."

While she'd fucked Seras with her pistol. Seras realized she'd only really met this woman for about fifteen minutes, the rest of their time together had been spent under insane circumstances. Who was this person, this woman who'd seen parts of Seras that she herself had only just met?

"I don't know if you'd noticed, but the idol has grown in physical size, likely fed by contact with you and the others," Lara said.

"And you, now," said Seras. "Is it still influencing us? I feel... I had this dream."

"I suspect that wasn't a dream," said Lara. "Who is that woman?"

"Her name is Hermione Granger," said Seras. "She was sent by the Ministry of Magic to spy on us and steal the idol. They think it's too dangerous for non-magical folk to have."

Hermione had told her much more than that. Much more. Seras had her laid out at the foot of the idol, its power infusing them both, binding them together. Everything Seras did brought Hermione to new heights of ecstasy, every lick, every suck, every probing finger. Seras had taken such cruel pleasure out of making Hermione cum until she couldn't breathe, out of keeping her on the edge of orgasm for hours at a time, she almost didn't care what lies the spy told or didn't tell. Once she knew all there was to know about Hermione, the Ministry, and her mission, Seras kept asking her questions. Did she have a boyfriend? How often did they fuck? Who fucked her better? Who did she want fucking her from now on? What was her name? Say it louder.

"Seras!" Lara shouted.

"Hmm? Oh, sorry, what?"

"You'd gone off for a bit there, love," said Lara. "We've got to bring that idol under control, and to do that I think we need to know about how it came to be out of control in the first place. What shape was it in when you found it?"

Seras thought back to that night, to the sensation of being pulled at by slimy tentacles and violated. She shuffled her long legs, feeling the wetness between them. "It was sitting on the TV stand in some bloke's room," said Seras. "There wasn't anyone around, it was like the ship had been abandoned."

"It was supposed to be inside a stone sarcophagus," said Lara. "The man I had smuggling it for me wouldn't have opened it."

"You're sure?"

"Positive," she said.

"Maybe the idol took control of someone," said Seras.

Lara's robe had been creeping open, the edge of the purple fabric not quite hiding the dark crescent of an areola. She shrugged her shoulders, her nipple slipped out. She noticed, but let it be, locking eyes with Seras. "You're filthy. Come, take a shower with me."

Fully aware of herself, Seras followed Lara into the bathroom. She gasped at the sight of it. White tiles, marble surfaces, gilded fixtures, an angel playing a harp wouldn't have looked out of place. Lara took off her robe to hang, looking sideways at Seras to do the same.

"This feels... different," said Seras, hanging her robe next to Lara's. She was filthy, had to agree. She felt sticky all over, especially her pussy.

"How do you mean?" said Lara, undoing her long, tight braid. She looked like a different woman with her hair down, as she turned the knob to the golden shower head nearby. Steam rose around them immediately. Seras watched as Lara stepped under the jets, her brown hair darkening in the hot water.

"Do you always invite strange women to shower with you?" said Seras, stepping under the water, wincing in pain. With her body always at room temperature, Seras was sensitive to sudden increases in hot or cold, but she adjusted quickly to anything short of open flame.

"Do you always accept invitations to shower with strange women?"

"You don't seem so strange," said Seras. "That's what I mean, doesn't this feel, I don't know, different from before?"

Lara pulled over a stool with her foot and bid Seras to sit on it while she fetched a soap and sponge. She started chaste, soaping Seras' back and arms, scrubbing them with the sea sponge, massaging supernaturally stiff muscles. Lara's fingers were absurdly powerful and Seras moaned as the knots in her were worked out.

"It does feel different," Lara said, soaping up Seras' breasts. She was gentle with the sponge, careful not to hurt the sensitive nipples she'd stiffened with her touch. "But I'm not sure I entirely trust my feelings right now."

Seras swallowed hard as Lara's fingers slipped into her pussy, finding her spot almost immediately. "Have you ever made yourself cum in the shower?"

"O-once or twice," said Seras, feeling like a rubber cord was being twisted up inside her.

"Only once or twice? You must've done it wrong, or you'd do it all the time," said Lara, her lips brushing Seras' ear.

"Is this... is this it? The thing back at the Hellsing Manor?"

"I don't know. Like you said, it feels different," said Lara, working her fingers deeper, holding Seras tighter to her wet, nude body. Her fingers, soft, powerful.

Seras looked up, saw only the white tile of the ceiling. She felt the cord inside her winding tighter, oozing a deep sense of calm anticipation the denser it became. Last night she'd been a meal. Ripped open, exposed, savored. She'd loved it, wanted to be eaten like that again and again, but this was altogether different. She was being fed, being given something, built up and protected. Soon the cord would snap and every fiber of her being would come undone, caught and gathered in Lara's arms.

"It feels good," Seras said before it all blew apart. There was no water, no stool, no tile under her feet, only Lara's wet skin, her living heat, lighting up the dead halls left dark by Seras' death years before.

When she returned to her senses she was gasping for breaths she didn't need, caught half off the wooden stool in Lara's embrace. She looked up into the woman's deep brown eyes, felt her lips part. Suddenly Lara pulled away, letting Seras gently to the floor. "I wouldn't trust any feeling too far, if I were you," she said. "At least for now."

Seras felt wet, alone. Old dishwater came to mind. She looked up at Lara, standing with her long, shapely legs spread, her wet, trim pubis on full display. "Of course, you can probably trust any feelings you might have about returning a favor," she said.

Seras stuck out her tongue as far as she could, enjoying the look on Lara's face as she showed off how agile it was. Lara sat down on the tiled floor and spread her legs, her expression that of someone strapping into a roller coaster as Seras crawled like a cat to its milk bowl. She began lapping, suddenly realizing all the women she'd licked had distinct flavors, none of which she could described beyond saying the woman's name. Integra. Hermione. Lara.

Lara.

"Seras," Lara said with each gasping breath as her own name was written across her clitoris over and over again. For fun, Seras wrote her own name, which on the second run brought Lara over. She held Seras by the hair, bringing her thighs tight together, a move that might've drowned a mortal woman but left Seras free to wiggle her tongue around against Lara's spasms.

Seras lay her head over Lara's pussy like a lioness over a kill, licking her lips clean. Slowly she crawled up Lara's body, hot water falling on them both. "If the sarcophagus is what was keeping the thing under control before, we should probably find it, or at least what's left of it," Seras said.

Sitting up, Lara nodded. "The Derleth hasn't gone anywhere, I saw to that much," she said. "We'll wait until nightfall, then search it."

Seras worried about what might happen at the Hellsing Manor between now and then, but figured it couldn't be helped. Going anywhere near the idol now would put her firmly back in its thrall, and given what she'd spent all night doing she needed some sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

Integra was certain the nude woman strapped to the table didn't have even the foggiest idea of what had become of Seras Victoria, but it would be fun to drip hot wax on her all the same. Hermione thought so, too, given the way she looked up at Integra with her big, pleading brown eyes.

"There are very few freaks left in the world who can beat the likes of Seras, we know that much," Integra said, letting a tiny drop of red wax splash into Hermione's chest, just below her throat. Her body tensed and she sucked in a breath. Integra let another drop fall, just below the first. Hermione was ready for it this time, she barely flinched as the wax cooled.

"I don't know anything about it, ma'am," said Hermione. "Please."

Please drag this out, make it hurt, make it me feel good.

"No? You didn't cast some sort of spell? Slip her some sort of potion? I knew letting you roam free was a mistake."

A big gob of wax had built up around the flame. Integra let it fall between Hermione's breasts. The witch gasped, winced as the wax burned her soft skin, the pain far out of sync with the minuscule amount of damage being done. All the torture books agreed that hot wax was more for fun than for confession, but Hermione didn't have to know that.

"Ma'am, Integra, that thing in the basement, it's doing something to us. I know it all seems right, I feel it too, but please, you have to..." hot wax fell on one of her nipples, forming a perfect red coating around it. Hermione closed her eyes, gritted her teeth to keep from crying out.

"Then again, you're not very magical without your wand," Integra said, ignoring the substance of Hermione's pleas while reveling in their quivering tone. "Perhaps Seras said something while she was rutting with you?"

Integra knew she hadn't, having watched most of said rutting, using it to whet her appetite for Seras later on. The vampire's enhanced stamina had to be good for something besides pulling double patrol shifts.

"She didn't. I swear, she didn't, no, please, no," her pleas ended in a high pitched squeal, caused by a massive gob of hot wax slowly poured over her stiff nipple, covering it and much of the areola.

"Well, if you didn't curse or poison her, and she didn't defect, she was either eaten by something or captured. Which brings us right back to square one."

She let a dollop of wax fall into Hermione's belly-button. The witch grunted as if punched in the stomach. "Shall I stop?" Integra said.

Hermione answered with her eyes, big, brown, pleading. Keep going.

Staring into the candle flame, watching the red wax pool, Integra wondered where her pet vampire could have gone. "How stupid of me," she said, drawing a line of wax down Hermione's navel, stopping just at the edge of her pubic hair. The little witch gasped and arched her back. "The burglar. If she bested Seras once, she could do it again."

She watched the rapid rise and fall of Hermione's bare chest. Beads of sweat covered her pale skin, making her shine in the candlelight. Integra set the candle down and stuck three of her fingers into Hermione's mouth. The witch sucked them eagerly, making them slick. Slowly Integra pulled back her hand, her fingertips leaving Hermione's mouth with a wet pop.

"What does this have to do with me?" said Hermione.

Integra cocked her eyebrow, slid her fingers into Hermione's pussy. "You're wet as a faucet. Are you enjoying this?"

"No! Let me go!" said Hermione as Integra's fingers went to work. They knew right where to press, where to rub. None of the words Hermione uttered was the one that would make Integra stop and set her free. Eventually, Hermione ceased her pleading, tried in vain to hide her pleasure as she squirmed on the table. Integra went slow, steady. Soon, Hermione was cracking like ice over a pond. Finally, one big split and the witch cried out. Deftly, Integra withdrew her fingers, grabbed the candle, and poured hot wax onto Hermione's cumming pussy. Her breath hitched in her throat, her back arched painfully. Hermione's eyes rolled into the back of her head just before she lost consciousness and went limp.

Integra lit a cigar and casually smoked until Hermione's eyes fluttered open several minutes later. "W-what happened. Where am I?"

Blowing a cloud of smoke over Hermione's damp sex, Integra let it all come back to her slowly. It was better to let it seep back in than to force it, she'd found.

"S-Sir Integra?"

"Ms. Granger. Any thoughts on where Seras might have gone?"

"Like you said, that burglar," said Hermione. "She knew what Seras was, knew how to attack. Seras was probably lured into a trap."

"The area was scrubbed before I could get anyone trustworthy on it," said Integra, melting the base of the candle with her cigar lighter, sticking it to the table between Hermione's legs at a slight angle so the wax would drip onto wet, pink flesh.

"Ooh," said Hermione.

"Let's hear some ideas on what our next move is," said Integra, eyeing the candle. She didn't want it tipping and actually burning the poor woman. "Better think quick."

"Hmm, right," said Hermione as the wax around the flame liquefied. "I mean, it's obvious what she came for, isn't it?"

Integra blew a cloud of smoke over the candle. The light flickered, the wax dripped, Hermione squeaked. "Yes, it is," said Integra. "Which means it's only a matter of time before she tries again."

"I can help with that," said Hermione, wiggling her hips as bits of hot wax ran down the side of the candle to cool against her skin.

"You'll be wanting your wand back, no doubt," said Integra.

"It's awfully hard to do any sort of real magic without it," said Hermione, eyeing a rather large ball of liquid red rolling down the side of the candle. It dried before making contact with her flesh, still wet and eager for more punishment.

"Oh, I'm sure," said Integra, gently breaking the wax that had hardened around Hermione's nipples, thinking about what it would take to ensure the witch's loyalty, or at least her obedience after she was reunited with her wand. "Speaking of real magic, you've given me an idea."

XXX

It wasn't possible. Muggles couldn't work magic. That's why they were muggles. Unless... no, impossible.

Impossible or not, Hermione still found herself kneeling in the middle of a magical circle, the arcane lines engraved into the marble floor. She was naked save for a short, black skirt that did more to accentuate her nudity than cover it. She was startled when the lights went out, but she wasn't truly frightened until half a minute later when the sorcerous lines in the floor began to glow red, lighting the room as if it were an overfed furnace, or Hell. Someone entered the room behind Hermione. She didn't turn to look, knowing it was Integra, but the woman had her full attention the moment she came into view. She was completely nude save for her black eye-patch, her yellow hair falling like a curtain past her waist. In her left hand she held Hermione's wand.

"This is the room my family used to bind the vampire, Dracula, to our bloodline and make him into the vampire, Alucard. Exactly how that was accomplished is somewhat of a mystery to me, but I've learned enough for it work on the likes of you," Integra said, touching the tip the wand to Hermione's lips, parting them gently. "You want this back, don't you? You know what to do. That's it, take it in."

The wand passed into Hermione's mouth. She sucked it, imaging it to be made of flesh. She forced her eyes to stay open as the wand was withdraw, its wet tip brought to the bronze cleft between Integra's legs.

"Smooth, I like it," said Integra. "I might take this to bed with me from now on, whenever you're not in direct need of it. Would you like that?"

Integra slid the wand tip between her legs, pushed it into her. "No, this won't do," said Integra. "I want the other end. Wet it for me, won't you?"

Hermione dutifully cinched forward, opened her mouth and took the handle of her own wand into her mouth, wrapping her tongue around it, tasting the salt from years of proper handling. Looking down the shaft of it she saw that despite her stated preference, Integra was enjoying the smooth vine wood rubbing against her clitoris.

She's fucking my wand. Did she somehow know about the taboos surrounding wands?

Hermione had to wonder how much Integra Hellsing truly knew about the wizarding world. She'd certainly seemed ignorant while watching Seras conduct her carnal interrogations, but something besides an instinct for base cruelty had to have tipped her off about how filthy this was. Witches and wizards used their wands for many things, but one thing muggle-borns soon learned from their peers was that you did not, you simply did not, use your wand, or anyone else's, for bedroom antics.

Hermione, like all muggle-borns, had thought this strange the first time she'd heard it. Not only because the notion of sex itself was strange, but that given all the weird things people did behind closed doors, why was sticking your wand, or someone else's, in your nether regions considered such a vile act among the magical community? It was such a taboo that not even witches and wizards famous for their deviant behavior and cruelty had ever been associated with it. Stranger still was how quickly muggle-borns who learned of this taboo adopted it.

"There, that'll do," said Integra, pulling the wand from Hermione's mouth and flipping it around. "Yes, much better."

The thick end of the wand was enveloped by Integra's pussy while the tip, slick with her juices, once again crossed Hermione's lips. She savored the flavor of the woman for as long as she could before tasting vine wood.

The red, glowing lines on the floor deepened in color as Integra's hand touched the top of her head, her fingers sinking into bushy hair. Hermione kept her eyes open, watching her wand grind against Integra's clitoris, driving her steadily towards an orgasm.

She's going to cum. She's going to cum with my wand.

Integra let out a whimper, her grip tightened over Hermione's scalp. She nearly choked when her mouth suddenly filled with semen, produced from the tip of her wand. Without thinking, she swallowed, kept swallowing as more came out in hard spurts. She was guzzling it when Integra pulled it out, dropping hot gobs of semen onto her face. In an instant it was all gone. An illusion, a hallucination. The taste, the smell, faded away.

"That was interesting," said Integra. "Your turn."

Watching her wand be besmirched had been bad enough, having it in her mouth had been deliciously intolerable. She got on her hands and knees, not wanting to watch what happened next.

"Tut, tut, turn around," said Integra, slapping Hermione's buttocks with the wand. Hermione did as she was told, cringed as the tip of her wand parted the lips of her pussy. Thin, hard, strangely cold, she felt ever centimeter of it sliding into a place it was never supposed to be.

"No good? Let's try the thicker end first," said Integra, slipping the wand out, bringing the butt up to Hermione's swollen sex and twisting it, teasing it in. Hermione, her face bloodred in the light, pushed herself up on her elbows to watch her wand be slid into her pussy by another woman.

"Do you like it?" Integra said.

Hermione let her mouth hang open, hypnotized by the desecration of her wand and body, at how good it felt. She met Integra's gaze, felt seen, felt her degradation witnessed. She came softly, the orgasm of her life having only happened mere hours before. While soft, it was noticeable; Integra pulled the wand out and licked it. "Now, the way you were before," she said.

Hermione got on her hands and knees, not sure how much her pussy could take in one night. She shrieked when she felt the tip of her wand touch her anus, moaned in disgust as it penetrated her.

"You don't like that? I can stop if you like. Shall I?"

"N-no," said Hermione. "K-keep going."

Cold as her wand was, her body responded by heating up. The warmth spread from the depths of the wands thrusting throughout her entire body. Between that and the light, she felt like she was roasting in an oven.

She moaned again when Integra's fingers slid into her pussy, working in tandem with the wand to send waves of ecstasy and loathing all through Hermione's body. She came harder than expected, Integra never let her forget the wand, working it like a gentle pump as Hermione breathed it out with her face pressed against the hard stone floor.

When Hermione had cummed her last, Integra stood up, leaving Hermione on the floor with her wand still inside. "Draw your wand and kneel," said Integra.

"Yes, yes, ma'am," said Hermione, pulling her wand out of her... she could barely think about it, but forced herself to. On her knees, before Integra, she looked up at her master.

"Hold your wand between your hands like this," said Integra. Hermione obeyed, holding up her sullied wand before her eyes. "Now, snap it in two."

Hermione's lips quivered, her eyes watered. She held her wand tight, twisted her wrists. The wand bent, she heard the wood fibers groan. Another centimeter and... Integra seized her hands, stopping the wand from breaking. The room went dark. Integra clapped her hands twice and the light from the fixture above turned on, bathing them its soft, yellow glow. Hermione held her wand in one hand, staring at it, unable to believe what she'd done to it.

"Now, so long as I can trust you with that thing, we can get to work," said Integra.

Hermione got up from the hard floor and followed Integra out of the room, walking several paces behind with a slight stoop in her shoulders. It was because she was tired, she thought to herself. She flicked her wand discretely, casting a nonverbal spell that made the filth on it vanish. She cast the spell several times in the hall, still the wand didn't seem clean.


	7. Chapter 7

One thing was clear, riding to missions in the back of a limousine was far better than going in the back of an armored personnel carrier. Clouds thick as ink dropped sheets of cold rain across the limo's tinted window. Through it, Seras saw the abandoned Derleth, looming like a haunted castle, its hull darker than the night itself.

"Why is it always raining when I investigate these?" Seras muttered.

"Vampires don't melt in the rain, do they?" said Lara, tossing a thin, plastic rain poncho onto Seras' lap, then donning one herself.

Under the poncho, Lara wore a pair of tight-fitting blue fatigues and a black tank top. Seras had on the same clothes she'd worn when she left the Hellsing manor; they'd been cleaned while she'd slept. For weapons, Lara carried her two pistols in hip holsters, while she'd let Seras borrow a black Desert Eagle. Just looking at the gun and remembering the little game she and Lara had played in the warehouse made her wet.

"No, that's only certain kinds of witches," Seras said, pulling the rain poncho over her head. "Just don't let me fall into the sea, that wouldn't be good."

"Do you remember anything about the ship?" Lara said.

Seras peered at the Derleth through what most people would consider to be an impenetrable gloom. Her vampiric senses saw the ship quite clearly.

"Nothing useful," she said. "I didn't see any sign of the crew or the police, but I know I didn't search the whole thing before I came across the statue."

Between ogling each other and being distracted by lurid fantasies of what they might do together later, neither Seras no Lara had been able to guess what sort of danger they might find on the ghost ship, if any at all. They stepped out of the limo into the pelting rain, Seras leading the way to the gangplank. Entering the ship through the same door she'd had used before, they discovered not much had changed. Dark, save for an emergency light here and there, no stench of rot or blood. The only difference from before was the ship's engine was shut down, leaving the corridors and rooms largely silent.

Off came the rain ponchos. Lara tested a tiny pocket flashlight, but slipped it into her pocket, preferring to let her eyes acclimate in the red emergency lights. Seras tried to move down a narrow hall at the same moment Lara did, bumping into her. Seras ached for the warmth. Lara had the lead, stopped and let out a sigh. "I think we should split up," she said.

Seras' stomach tightened, her mouth watered. "That's never a good idea," she said. "And we've got all night. It's like you said, Sir Integra and Ms. Granger will be fine."

One could argue that point, Seras well knew, but she hoped Lara wouldn't. Not now. Seras could feel her presence in the dark, her smell, the heat from her body, the sound her blood made pulsing through her veins. A blending of two distinct hungers.

"You know I'm right. I can see it in your eyes. They're literally glowing," said Lara.

Seras blinked rapidly, fighting the stupid urge to shut her eyes and protect their modesty. Windows to the soul indeed. Her eyes met Lara's. There was a sort of hunger there, if counted a desire to be eaten as an appetite. "I... yes, I suppose you're right," said Seras, salivating as her pussy moistened.

"You head that way, and down. We'll meet up below decks. Here," Lara said, handing Seras an earpiece. "It's linked up to mine. Touch it to talk."

"Got it," said Seras.

She was off at a run, wanting as much distance between herself and Lara as possible. They'd be together again, soon, but there was work to do in the meantime. She needed to search the parts of the ship she hadn't before, to learn something about the idol. How had it gained its freedom? What happened to the crew and the others? She made her way through the dark hallways and rooms hoping to find some bit of evidence that things were amiss, beyond the vanished crew. A spilled drink, scattered documents, tools left out, but there was nothing. It was as if the ship had been kept tidy right up until it appeared abandoned in English waters.

The bridge was near the top of the ship's tower, overlooking the deck. The windows could have used a wipe, but nothing looked out of the ordinary. Seras found the ship's log on an old bubble Mac, noted that no entries had been made by a person after the time period during which the Derleth was said to have gone missing. Whatever had happened to compromise the crew, it had been quick.

Lara's voice crackled in her ear. "Seras, can you hear me?" she said.

"I read you, over."

"You should come down here. I've found something."

"What?

"Looks like a cocoon of some sort, something out of a Ridley Scott movie. Don't worry, it looks like it already hatched."

"I'd say that's a good reason to worry," said Seras, already back-tracking, wondering how the hell she'd missed an Alien cocoon. "Where are you?"

"B level, port side, I won't be hard to find," said Lara.

Seras remembered little of her first excursion aboard the ship, but knew she'd only been down the starboard side. She made her way to the area Lara described and knew right away something was wrong. The walls, ceiling, and floor were coated in a black, sticky substance that clung to her boots. She ran a finger through the stuff, trying to identify it. Odorless, like rubber in texture. "Lara, come in," she said, touching her earpiece. "Lara, do you copy?"

Lara's voice was muffled and broken. "Come... B side... can't miss..."

Something was wrong. Seras should be able to hear Lara wherever she was, but besides the quiet hum from the ship's internal wiring, the intense rain outside, and the sloshing seawater, there was nothing. Even reaching out with her vampiric senses told her little. It was as if some sort of psychic static was interfering.

"Shouldn't have split up," she muttered, tracking through the layer of black ooze on the floor. She wiped some of the gunk off a door window, peered inside at the kitchen. This was more like it, she thought, gently pushing the door open for a better look. The workstation that had been in the middle of the room was flipped over and shunted to the side, blocking the stoves, to make room for half a dozen black, slimy cocoons, each big enough to hold one or two people-sized creatures. Each one had been split open, their insides grayish, streaked with black ooze.

"Lara," said Seras, touching her earpiece. "I'm in the kitchen. There's a bunch of those cocoon things, all hatched. Where are you?"

"B... miss..."

"Damn it," Seras hissed. She felt like a baby Draculina again, not knowing what she was up against, except now there was no expert to guide her. You're not a baby anything, she reminded herself. You're a full-grown vampire, a real one. Dread nothing, because you are something dreadful. Though the dread she felt wasn't for herself, it was for Lara, a woman she'd only known a few hours in total and most of those had been spent rather strangely. Still, Seras worried for her. Humans simply weren't as durable as vampires and God only knew what had hatched from these cocoons.

She moved through the kitchen, her sharp eyes looking for Lara's tracks in the black gunk. They led where the goo was thickest, into the corridors again. It had gummed up the walls in one passage so much that Seras had to walk sideways. The psychic static was intense, Seras had to tune it out completely and rely on her more mundane senses. She heard something up ahead, something wet. On the floor, covered by ooze, was a lump. Seras poked it with her foot, found one of Lara's pistols. "Damn," Seras said, moving quicker, finding more of Lara's things, her boots, hip satchel, shirt, pants...

"Lara!"

The black muck had entirely overtaken a corridor. Stuck inside like an animal in a tar pit was Lara. The ooze clung luridly to her naked body, moving over her like a slime mold as she writhed in slow ecstasy. Her glazed eyes fell on Seras as something like a hand stroked her face, hooking her lips with its fingers. She sucked them as they entered her mouth, savoring the taste as they withdrew to travel down her throat and bare chest.

"Lara? Lara!"

Dozens of tar-colored hands held Lara, squeezing, caressing every centimeter of her. With a wet, sucking noise they spread her legs and arms. Oozing hands cupped and squeezed her breasts, from behind her a set of fingers reached between her legs, the oozing fingers parting her so they could slip in. Lara's eyes fluttered, her mouth hung open. Seras peered into the oozing mass, looking for something to shoot. Nothing, just hands, goop, and Lara herself, who looked well on her way towards cumming.

"Bloody hell," Seras muttered, holstering the Desert Eagle and wading into the goop to retrieve Lara.

Lara's predicament made more sense now. The goo, the hands, all were far stronger than they'd looked. Seras clothing was no match for it and in a few moments she was stripped bare, covered in the lukewarm slime, molested dozens of hands. They sought her private, sensitive areas first. Seras ignored the probing fingers, her only thought that of getting Lara out. She felt them inside her, wet, slick, surprisingly gentle for how strong they were. They especially liked her breasts, and unlike many, knew how to touch them. Seras shook her head to clear it, knowing the pleasure she felt, the urge to let the goo have its way, was all some sort of psychic trick. She held Lara close, trying to find the leverage to pull her free while not pulling her apart, a real concern given her strength and that of the slime.

"S-Seras," Lara said, eyes fluttering.

"It's alright, I'll get you out, hang on."

"N-no. Find what we came for. Then me. It'll... can't explain..." Her body shook from a powerful orgasm, one she tried to fight at first. "Go!" she shouted, her eyes popping open.

And then Lara was gone, lost in a flood of her own brain chemicals and whatever perverse psychic influence the goo had over her. Seras was getting a powerful taste of it herself, imaging being swallowed by the stuff, having it ooze its way into every opening she had, her long dormant pores included. The ooze would fill every chamber, every vein, blood vessel, every cell. She'd be fucked into nothingness, into ultimate and final bliss.

Somehow she was free, standing naked and clean in the corridor, watching Lara cum while the ooze presented her once more, as if in invitation. See what you're missing, it said, holding Lara up, supporting her while its appendages caressed and squeezed her flesh.

"This isn't over," Seras said to the goo, sprinting down the passage that led to the cargo hold. Naked, weaponless, she ran, cutting through the mess deck to the other side of the ship, finding more hatched pods. The idol had done this, somehow, which meant Integra and Ms. Granger were in danger after all. Seras was tempted to leave the ship, to fly to the Hellsing Manor and smash the damned idol, regardless of what it made her want to do, but she thought better of it. Lara was the one in trouble now, and no one was getting saved without that sarcophagus.

She found the corridor leading to the cargo hold entrance blocked. The goo had filled it, hardened so that any attempt to squeeze through the narrow gap in the middle would have ended in blood. Seras went to find another way, stopped and slapped her forehead. Still forgetting you're a No-Life-Queen? That you're a Midian? Her left arm dissolved, becoming shadow, lashing out at the hardened goo, striking it with the force of a thunderbolt.

The idol's goop hadn't been made with the likes of her in mind, it seemed, and she didn't stop thrashing her shadow-arm until she felt the steel door on the other side give way. Her arm reformed, she clenched her fist, bringing all the molecules back together, into something that resembled a human woman. She'd long stopped asking things like, 'God, what am I?' over stuff like this, and bounded into the cargo hold, ready to dissolve her entire body into killing shadow if need be.

She and Lara needn't have poured over the ship's records as long as they had, Seras knew right away where the sarcophagus was in the hold, sensing it with her vampiric abilities. It was easy now that she was near it and free of the goo's psychic static. She found the wooden box the idol had been stored in lying behind a red shipping container. It didn't take a police detective to piece together what had happened. The box was lying on its side, the lid having popped off when it fell. The sarcophagus, a meter-long lump of gray stone covered in weathered markings, lay amid some straw and random pieces of packing foam. Its lid had come off and lay cracked in half on the floor.

It was just as Lara had predicted. Since the sarcophagus was technically being smuggled, it wasn't packed right. Something happened and it fell, breaking open and allowing the idol to influence the crew. How long it had taken the thing to turn them all into groping pod people, Seras couldn't say, but it was a question first and foremost in her mind as she righted the sarcophagus and set its cracked lid back on. A quick look around, she spied some steel straps holding a shipping container in place, used them to secure the lid to the sarcophagus. A bit of thick rope, some remembered knot-tying lessons from police academy, and she had the sarcophagus over her back like a school bag.

Despite her strength, it was an awkward thing to carry up stairs and through narrow corridors, but she took heart in seeing how the soft goop reacted to its proximity, retreating from it like a demon from holy water. She saw with some trepidation the people of the goo, come out to watch her from adjacent corridors and side rooms. They had no faces, no genders, nothing to prove they'd once been people. They filled the corridor behind her, moving fast over the surfaces the black ooze had blanketed, slower over the bare patches it had retreated from.

Seras had feared the slime would try and hide Lara away somewhere, but the stuff wasn't that cunning. Lara remained where Seras had left her, now she hung like a woman crucified, the slime-people holding her up while others caressed her, penetrated her with their fingers. She was unceremoniously dropped on the floor once Seras came to her with the sarcophagus.

"Lara! Lara, wake up!" said Seras, checking the woman over for injuries. Besides a few bumps and bruises, there didn't seem to be any, though she was spitting up a large amount of black sludge. Seras knelt beside her while she passed it, watching the stuff slither away like something out of a horror movie.

"Lara? Say something."

Lara spit black ooze on the floor, blinked away the fog. "You found it. Works like a charm, I see."

"It really does," said Seras, briefly heartened. "But..."

"But? But what?" said Lara, standing with Seras' help. She looked around for her clothes, found a pair of panties and slipped them on.

"Er, those are mine," Seras said, pointing at Lara's underwear. "I mean, the sarcophagus, it works against these things, but will it protect us from the idol? I still feel... strange."

A long silence passed between them, each wondering where their thoughts began and those of something else ended. Was that even how it worked? Seras remembered vividly all the things she'd done under its spell, how sullied she'd felt, how delicious it all was.

"You're right. We'd be foolish in making any assumptions," said Lara, picking up another pair of panties, her own, and tossing them to Seras.

Black, cotton, no frills. Lara had good taste in underpants. Seras slipped them on, feeling as if Lara were touching her. "We still need to hurry. I can't let what happened to these people happen to Sir Integra, or to Ms. Granger."

"Understandable, but we needn't be hasty," said Lara. "The consciousness behind that little black statue had been cut off from humanity for quite a long time. What we're seeing here may just be it getting its feet under it again. Now that it's a little more oriented, it may take a subtler approach."

Seras found her bra. It was missing some hooks, but otherwise went on as it should. Lara was busy looking for hers. Seras saw the garment lying further down the hall. "Approach to what?" said Seras, watching Lara's breasts as they swayed.

"I don't know. Its history is a bit spotty, as you might expect."

"Seems to me like it should be destroyed," said Seras, her eyes on Lara's chest as the woman stood, indignant.

"We'll be doing nothing of the sort, so long as there's another choice," said Lara. "Now, help me find my bra and we can get going."


	8. Chapter 8

Thank God the sheets were black.

It was first coherent thought to form in Lara's mind since sundown, when her home transformed into a smaller, more haunted place. She was naked, breathing heavily. Bright patches of warmth smoldered on her neck and breasts. Straddling her was the vampire, Seras, nude from the waist up. Her red eyes lost in reverie, fresh blood darkened the corner of her mouth.

"A-are you done?" said Lara, unsure about what she wanted the answer to be. Seras' bites had been electric, robbing Lara of her breath for many long moments at a time, making the world flicker in and out. Seras ran her long tongue from one corner of her mouth to the other, contemplating Lara's tender, nude form.

"Did you cum?" said Seras, her voice heavy, far away.

"Yes," said Lara.

Seras closed her eyes, disappointed. "That should be enough, then," she said. "Or at least as much as you should give."

This was a change, Lara thought. Not an hour ago she'd felt like a zebra freshly run down by a pack of lions, the alpha female on top of her, eating her fill, delighting in writhing, squealing prey she'd conquered. Lara had been chased across entire jungles by apex predators, had escaped human cannibals, never before had she felt more like a piece of meat, never had she cum so hard in all her life. She'd have never guessed the vampire, the red-eyed demon, that had so loved licking the blood off her tits would now be so thoughtful of her health and safety. Lara looked down at her ravaged body, surprised to see little evidence of her mauling beyond what would pass for hickeys under light examination.

"How are you feeling?" said Lara.

"Pretty good," said Seras, sounding like a perfectly normal person who'd just had a refreshing salad lunch. "I don't usually need much blood, really, but it's been a few days."

That was the umpteenth time the vampire had either apologized or made an excuse for her diet since asking Lara to be her evening meal. The blood-lapping demon really was gone, thought Lara. Despite all the things she and Seras had done with each other, asking to drink her blood had been difficult.

They showered together, Lara making Seras cum with her tongue once they were both clean. "So who's this friend of yours we're going to go see?" said Seras, dry, wrapped in a white cotton bathrobe in Lara's bedroom.

"She's a witch, though I doubt she and Hermione Granger would have much in common," said Lara, opening one of the room's smaller closets. Inside were clothes she rarely wore, and some she had never seen. They looked fashionable enough, the woman she paid to keep it stocked and up-to-date had so far been reliable in that respect. Lara grabbed two outfits and laid them out on the bed. "Which one do you like?"

"Oh, I don't know, I don't wear clothes like that very often," said Seras. "You said we were going to see a witch?"

"Yes, she owns a club on the East End. The Umbra, or something like that. She'll meet us there. We don't have to go in, but we should look like we belong, at least."

"Oh, I see. Why not that one, then?'

She'd picked the black skirt with lace down the sides. It came with a red top that stopped at the midriff. That left Lara with the tight, denim shorts, white tank top, and leather jacket. Seras needed some help getting into her shoes. Low heels with laces running all the way up to the knee.

"People dance in these?" Seras said.

"Not for long," said Lara, walking Seras down to her garage where she let the vampire ogle the cars and motorcycles until settling for the black Lamborghini, a fair blend of discretion and showing-off, perfect for where they were going and what they wanted to do.

"I've never ridden in a cool car!" Seras said. "Sir Integra always has me in military vehicles or black sedans."

"People who fight monsters should drive around in top-end cars," said Lara, accelerating, effortlessly weaving through the nighttime traffic. She parked the car in a garage she knew where it would be safe, not so much from thieves but from gawkers. She led Seras through the side door of a low, brick building, out into another alley then up a flight of stairs to wooden door, painted red. Lara knocked seven times. The door unlatched on its own.

Inside sat a woman dark haired woman sucking on a lolly, dressed in a skin-tight black suit, she had her long legs thrown up and crossed over onto a desk. She peered at them over a sharp looking pair of black spectacles. "Oh dear, what have you gotten into?" she said, removing her glasses and polishing them with a bit of cloth that appeared with a snap of her fingers.

Lara knew what she was talking about, but caught herself looking down at her body anyway. "What do you mean?"

"Probably a good thing you can't see it," said the leggy woman, standing up and strutting over, her high heels clicking pointedly on the wooden floor. She stood a full head over Lara, and made even Seras look short.

"Bayonetta."

"Lara Croft. Who's your vampire friend?"

"Seras Victoria," said Seras, her legs coming together unconsciously. At least she didn't salute.

"It's gotten into you both quite deep," said Bayonetta, strutting around them, looking their figures up and down. "Fortunately, you can't spread it yourselves."

Seras cleared her throat. "Excuse me, I don't mean to be rude, but if you know something about what's happened to us, could you explain?"

Bayonetta stood a centimeter from Seras, starring her down, seeing if she'd shiver and break. "Your idol, it was carved prior to the rise of human civilization by inhuman hands as a tool to commune with an entity from an Outer plane. When it fell into the hands of humans, they mistook it for a fertility idol an worshiped it as such. You know why, of course, but believe me, the thing you're dealing with cares nothing for the concept as we understand it."

"We'd guessed that much," said Seras, looking annoyed at how close Bayonetta stood to her, but refusing to step back.

"Then you've also guessed that it's rubbed off on you a bit? Even far away you feel compelled to do things, to seek out certain types of thrills, yes?"

"I know what I know, it's what I don't know that's bothering me," said Seras through clenched teeth, surprising Lara with her fierceness. She imagined those teeth nibbling her thighs, slowly moving closer to her center.

"Think of it like mold," said Bayonetta. "Except the mold works a bit like a radio antenna and is attuned to the will of an ultrademonic entity, one that's broadcasting from some kind of conduit, say an idol carved in its likeness. The signal can get stronger, it can be blocked, but that mold is going to be tough to get out." She stepped sideways and was in front of Lara, her overbearing way somehow friendlier. "I can work a spell that should block the signal for however long you need, but it won't block it completely, and it comes at the price we discussed."

"Hey, what?" said Seras, making Lara blush.

"Oh, you didn't tell her? If only one of you pays, only one of you gets the spell," said Bayonetta.

"Tell me what?" Seras said. "What's the price for the spell?"

"I want you two to put on a show for some clients of mine. Nothing fancy, just some dancing."

Lara felt the back of her neck getting hot, not over the prospect of doing a striptease, but from Seras glowering at her. "Dancing? I'm a horrible dancer, and I'd probably be even worse at the sort of dancing you're thinking of!"

"I don't doubt it, with that rotten attitude of yours," said Bayonetta, stepping lightly back over to Seras, this time keeping a respectable, if intimate, distance. "Luckily there's a spell for that." She hooked Seras around the waist and pulled her in tight. Their lips met. Rather than go rigid or pull away, Seras melted into Bayonetta, her lips responding in kind to the other's sudden advance. When they parted, Bayonetta stepped lightly away, leaving Seras to sway like a tree tussled by the wind.

"What did you do to her?" said Lara.

"Some might say I've lowered her inhibitions," said Bayonetta, as Seras blinked, a sleeper awakened. "But what I've really done is put her in control. I can do the same for you, if you like."

More out of solidarity than desire, Lara nodded, stepped into Bayonetta's embrace and received the spell. Her lips were sweet. Lara felt a rush of coming through them, cool and electric. She shuddered, briefly tasting the witch's tongue in her mouth before it was gone, leaving her head spinning. When the room was still, she felt lighter on her feet, stronger. Her lungs got more out of each breath, and she felt stifled by her clothes.

"When do we go on? We're in a bit of a hurry," said Lara.

"Whenever you like, love," said Bayonetta, gesturing towards a black door on the other end of the room. "Time works a bit differently where you'll be performing, so don't worry about being late."

Lara took Seras' hand and led her through the black door. "Let's get this over with," she said in the dark, as the door shut behind them.

Red lights kicked on above two silver poles, illuminating a circular floor. There were no walls, only darkness, from which emanated a low drumbeat. Lara felt eyes watching her, and her body responded. She kicked off her shoes, pulled back her jacket, and swung around the closest pole. She watched Seras do the same. The vampire was unsure of herself at first, then surprised when it turned out to be fun.

"This is weird," said Seras, shaking her hips in time with the mysterious drumbeat. "I'm still not very good at it."

Lara leaned her back against her pole, felt the eyes in the dark crawling over her with lecherous interest. She touched her breasts, drawing her hands down as if slowly pulling off something vile. She did the same down her stomach, around her hips, her thighs. She threw her buttocks out as she bent forward, rising up so quick her ponytail snapped.

"Just touch yourself," she said, drawing her hands up her chest, around her neck, lowering herself down the pole and spreading her knees apart. "I take it you don't do much yoga?"

The drumming sped up.

"I sleep in a coffin," said Seras, spinning around the pole, shaking her hips. She focused on Lara, began copying her every move.

Lara slid her hands down her buttocks, pulled them around and slid them between her thighs, watching Seras do the same. When she brought her hands up, she caught the bottom of her shirt. Slowly she pulled it up, stopping just under her breasts. Seras mirrored her. Their eyes met. Lara let one of her breasts out, watching Seras do the same. She teased herself with the other, slowly letting her own free of the white fabric. Finally, her shirt was off, as was Seras'. Lara whipped hers around her pole and leaned dangerously far back. Seras did the same, only her shirt slipped off and she landed on the floor with a thump. Both of them laughed at each other, their mirth rising as each caught up to themselves, remembered where they were and why they'd come.

"You were right, this is weird," said Lara, letting her shirt fall to the floor. She looked down at her breasts, cupped them. The spell she was under made her own body fascinating to her. Fit as she was she'd always had a keen appreciation for it, but this was different. She kept herself in shape for the same reason she kept her pistols cleaned and oiled, not so it would look good, but so it would serve her well. She stood against the pole, held it between her breasts and dipped down, wondering what manner of beings watched her from the shadowy walls.

Seras did her best to stand up erotically, nearly fell over again due to her heels, but she caught the pole and swing around it. She, too, fit the pole between her breasts, squeezed them together, fascinated by her own flesh. The drumbeat was coming hot and heavy. Lara felt it vibrating her, keeping her moving. She undid the button on her shorts, let the zipper down. "Let's get serious about this," she said, wetting two of her fingers with her mouth. She watched Seras copy her, wondered if she was fingering herself in the exact same way.

"How long do we have to do this?" Seras said.

"Until the music stops, probably," said Lara, sliding her shorts down around her ankles, stepping out of them as she did another twirl around the pole. She only hoped Seras' hand wasn't too wet to hold on. She didn't, and Lara a was struck momentarily by the sight of her, completely stripped save for her shoes. Lara walked toe to heel straight for Seras, who stood like a deer caught in a pair of headlights. She came alive again when Lara touched her hips, used them as a guide while she circled her, their bodies lightly touching the whole way around. Stopping in front of Seras, Lara rested her hands on the vampire's shoulders, let them cascade down her body as Lara slowly crouched. The outer lips of Seras' pussy glistened in the red light. Lara licked where it shined, tasting the vampire for what felt like the first time. They eyes on her, whatever their nature, Lara had the impression they could see rather fine details, and so she didn't worry too much about her presentation. Still, she made a show of it, teasing Seras' lips apart with her tongue, being coy about how deep she'd soon go.

Whatever was watching them liked what it saw. The drums sounded faster, the sense of being spied on intensified. Lara thrust her tongue into Seras, curled it to catch the spot the vampire liked, knowing that somehow the watchers could see this, could see what Seras felt. She put on a show for them, flicking her tongue over Seras' sweet spot, pushing it, pulling it, making the vampire's legs wobble. Something rolled across the floor, stopping at Lara's leg. A bright red double-headed dildo as long as her forearm, nubbed at each end. Lara picked it up, showed it to Seras. "I think this is the finale," she said.

Seras got down on her hands and knees, raising her buttocks high, letting Lara gently insert the dildo into her pussy. Whatever it was made out of, it glided inside Seras with little effort. Lara, too, had no trouble guiding it inside her. She let out a soft cry, not expecting such a sudden spike in pleasure. She moved her hips back until her buttocks hit Seras'. They quickly found a rhythm, the drumbeat changed to match them.

Lara rested her forehead against the backs of her hands, forgot where she was, who she was with, became loss in the geyser blasting through her. She moaned shamelessly, listened to Seras doing the same. Her voice caught in her throat the moment the orgasm hit, a big bang between her legs, blasting outward into her every nerve.

Floating in the warm dark she felt their eyes on her; they pulled at her flesh like tentacle suckers, drinking in more than her image. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw them, the watchers. Her mouth opened to scream just as a second orgasm erupted suddenly, blasting her nervous system into glowing filaments.

When her eyes opened again the red light was gone, replaced by soft white. The black walls, now mirrors in which Lara saw herself on her hands and knees, butt-to-butt with Seras. She sucked in a breath as she crawled away, letting the slick dildo fall out of her pussy and hang Seras' until the vampire pulled it out.

"Maybe that means you get a wish?" said Lara.

Seras snorted laughter, covering her mouth. "I wish you'd warned me about this, I'd have mentally prepared myself better."

"You seemed to enjoy it," said Lara, finding it hard to stand, her thigh muscles like jelly.

"I was, until I saw our audience," Seras said with a shudder.

"Let's try not to think about it," Lara said, already working hard on blotting the memory from her mind, though the images would linger.


	9. Chapter 9

Crouched in the hedgerows behind the Hellsing Manor, Lara wondered if she'd been scammed by the witch, Bayonetta. She still felt the pull of the idol, knew that Integra Hellsing hadn't moved it from its dungeon confines. Either the woman was arrogant, preoccupied with other matters, or had laid a trap. She and Seras had discussed the possibility of the latter ad nauseam. Since they couldn't be completely sure as to what the witch, Hermione, was capable of, there was nothing to do but proceed with caution.

Or at least Seras would be proceeding with caution. Lara's job was to call attention to herself without having it look like that's what she was doing, hopefully giving Seras enough of a distraction to slip in, put the idol in the repaired sarcophagus, and bring an end to all this foolishness.

Stalking through the hedgerows, Lara meant to enter the main house the same way she had before. The full moon shone brilliantly through wispy clouds. Not an ideal night for sneaking around, but Bayonetta's spell wouldn't last forever, unlike the memory of her soft, pink lips. Focus, Lara, she thought, seeing the gardener's shack, ancient and sagging, just as it had been. The window above it was closed. Later, she'd be embarrassed by how many beats her heart seemed to skip when the shack door opened and out came Sir Integra. She wore a pair of black slacks and a white, button-downed business shirt, untucked with the top buttons left undone, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. "Good evening. Ms. Lara Croft, I presume?"

The woman didn't appear armed, but that wasn't enough to make Lara lower her guard. "At your service, Sir Integra. I'm afraid you have me a bit embarrassed."

From her shirt pocket Integra pulled a tin of small cigars, stuck one in her mouth, felt her pockets for a lighter. "The embarrassment is all mine," she said. "I don't suppose you brought a lighter?"

Though she didn't smoke and knew a dozen different ways to build a fire from scratch, Lara did keep an old Zippo in her pocket. She tossed it to Integra, who caught it, not wasting a second in lighting the cigar. She blew out a long cone of smoke, and rather than toss the lighter back, casually strode over to Lara and handed it to her.

"Thank you. There's a chill in the air, let's go inside. Through the front door, if you don't mind. The window frames are expensive."

The moment Integra turned her back Lara knew she should strike. Nothing serious, just enough to stun the woman long enough for her to be bound. Lara wasn't sure why she didn't do this. Nobody was this English, she thought, following the long curtain of Integra's yellow hair around to the front of the manor, through the proper entrance. Lara felt like she'd walked into an oven. The idol's pull was like heat against Bayonetta's protective spell. She was led through the gloomy halls into a tiny sitting room made smaller by the wall decorations and dusty antiques the Hellsings had collected over the years. She had a seat on a small, black couch across from Integra, who settled into a stuffed high-backed chair.

"This is the second time, as far as I'm aware, that you've come to my home unannounced," said Integra. "If you were to announce yourself properly, I might be able to receive you better in the future."

Lara had a feeling that her arrival this time had been well-anticipated. Hopefully Seras' hadn't.

"Force of habit, I suppose," said Lara. "Not many interesting places willingly receive me these days."

Integra chuckled, knocked her ashes into a tray made from a gorilla's hand. "No, I suspect not, since your usual aim is to take things that don't belong to you."

Lara had heard similar indictments against her chosen career before, usually in the form of subpoenas or spittle-flecked diatribes either to her face or over the phone. She grinned. For once, she was the wronged party. "Things that don't belong to me don't necessarily belong to someone else, either," said Lara. "Not that it matters, since the item we're discussing right now does, in fact, belong to me."

Integra smiled darkly with her cigar between her teeth, the light staining her spectacle lenses orange. "Does it, really? That's why you were smuggling it by ship?"

"The law would've sided with me in the end, there's a long list of precedents," said Lara, somewhat defensively. "You certainly have no claim to it."

"Incorrect," said Integra. "The object was clearly responsible for the disappearances aboard the Derleth, making it a supernatural threat to England and its people. That puts it squarely under my agency's purview."

Lara would've felt much better about this conversation had she been the one to start it. It was certainly making for a fine distraction, but to whose benefit? "Forgive me, but isn't it your agency's mission to destroy such threats, not warehouse them? Seems to me that's more the Ministry's purview."

Integra scoffed, flicked more ashes into the ape's palm. "The Ministry of Magic's purview begins and ends with the witches and wizards it governs, and nothing else, despite its belief to the contrary," said Integra. "Besides, the Ministry sent one of its agents to me not long ago, and she's helping to keep an eye on it."

How much longer would charade continue? Did Integra really think Lara would simply leave, convinced that the idol now belonged to Hellsing and the Ministry of Magic? "I doubt very much that thing is properly contained, Sir Integra. I have the means to secure it, I'd ask that it be turned over to me immediately, since it's dangerous."

"So good of you to ask, after making two attempts to steal it," said Integra.

"I had a feeling you'd say no, and I didn't want to make things awkward. But, now I see that's unavoidable."

"Mmm, perhaps," said Integra, snuffing out her cigar in the ape's palm. "Let's go have a look at it, shall we? I suspect that by now my servants will have settled their differences."

Lara kept her expression flat, though internally she seethed. Of course they'd been lying in wait, knowing Lara and Seras would come. She could only hope Seras Victoria turned out to be more resourceful than Hermione Granger.

The manor's basement was not as Lara had left it. Black tendrils had spread over the walls and ceiling almost like a network of veins, some of the thicker ones sporting pustules of green, bioluminescent ooze that served as light bulbs. "I love what you've done with the place," said Lara. "It really has that 'infested by eldritch horror' vibe I heard was popular this season."

"It's always been that way," said Integra. "When my father died, my uncle showed his true colors and tried to assassinate me, to take the family headship. He hunted me like a rat through these very halls until I killed him."

Even Lara had to cock an eyebrow at that one. "I'm sorry to hear that. But, you must be able to see the thing isn't contained. Surely you're aware it's affected your mind. Your vampire servant told me all about it."

"And she'll be punished appropriately," said Integra, holding open a door for Lara to walk through.

She gasped, louder than she would've liked, at the massive hole in front of her.

The idol had been busy, fairly demolishing the manor's basement, digging down into the earth a pit for itself to grow. The heart of it remained on its altar, now fifteen meters down from where Lara stood. It had sprouted like a fungal tree, tendrils wrapping around each other, shooting upward like spires, others fanning out like roots, forming a wiggling carpet across the floor.

Seras Victoria was completely entangled in tentacles, the ones holding her up by her arms thick and powerful, lined with octopus-like suckers. Other tentacles had torn away her uniform, leaving tentacles with various specialties to envelope her. Thin, nimble ones covered her ample breasts, squeezing them, teasing their nipples erect. Powerful, grabbing tentacles held her legs apart while ones that were little more than prehensile phalluses wormed their way into her pussy and ass. Hermione stood by the sarcophagus, naked, waving her wand over it.

"You're welcome to try something," said Integra. "Though you'd be spoiling their fun, I think."

Seras' eyes were pinched shut, her lips gently parted. Lara knew the expression well, the vampire was about to cum and wanted to drag it out a little longer. Her eyes popped open upon hearing Integra speak. Something about seeing Integra and Lara together, starring down at her, must've tipped things over the edge, for her eyes shut tight again and her teeth clenched. Her legs and breasts jiggled as she was rattled to her core by a powerful orgasm.

Hermione went immediately to the vampire, holding her as she climaxed, locking lips with her, drinking in her moans. Tendrils slithered up Hermione's legs, holding her in place while others, their tips modified in various ways, some covered in bumps, others in rings, some with bulging heads. She held onto Seras as they fought to enter her, their sudden presence forcing a cry from her throat.

"I think we've all had enough fun," said Lara, sliding down the steep decline, landing on her feet in a patch of tentacles. They tried to grab her, but she was nimble, leaping and rolling her way over to the sarcophagus, where the tendrils kept their distance. Out came her pistols. One she pointed at Hermione, expecting her wand to come out, hoping she'd only hit the wood, accepting of the fact a bullet through the poor witch's hand might be necessary to end this.

Hermione held her wand by her side, more interested in kissing Seras as the tentacles enveloped and invaded them both. The sucker-covered black ropes even relaxed, allowing Seras to embrace her lover. A bullet to the vampire's neck would certainly wake her up, Lara thought, struck by the petty jealously she felt.

"Seras!" Lara shouted. "Seras! What happened?"

Seras pulled her face away from Hermione, her red eyes glazed over as the witch nibbled her neck. "Sorry," she said. "I got all tangled up, and then she came, and she was trying to help me, and then she said I was always the one, you know, in control, and we got to talking, and, well..."

Integra was suddenly behind Lara, unarmed, drawing only another cigar from her pocket. "May I borrow your lighter again?"

"That depends, are you going to try and stop me from putting the idol into the sarcophagus?"

"I don't think I need to," said Integra, looking at the tendrils ensnaring her servants, their limbs left free to envelope each other. Seras was so immersed in Hermione, Lara doubted they'd separate even if the tendrils retreated. Likely Sir Hellsing thought the idol's tentacles would never let Lara reach it. She thought wrong. Lara was off at a spring, dodging dozens of long, thick tentacles as they threw themselves at her. She dove through two of them, landed on her shoulder and came up in a roll, right in front of the altar where the idol sat. She need only yank it free from the tendrils it had conjured.

The instant she touched it she felt Bayonetta's spell blasted away. What followed was like having molten steel poured over her from a giant vat, no time to even scream before everything went dark. When consciousness returned, the air was thick as bathwater and twice as hot. She gasped, even though her airways were unobstructed. She was on her hands and knees before a throne of black tentacles, sat upon by Integra. Thin nimble, fingerlings unbuttoned her shirt and gently worked her clothes off. Lara felt them enveloping her, warm, soft, sleek but not slimy, not yet. They stripped her rather neatly, hoisting her up into a kind of stirrup chair. Seras and Hermione stood beside her, the latter playfully prodding Lara's flesh with her wand.

"I wish it hadn't damaged the basement," said Integra, "but as butlers go, it's work is impeccable. The parts of the manor it can reach have never been cleaner." She stood up from the throne, came to rest her hands on Lara's knees. "I assume even now you have some reservations. You won't after we're finished."

Integra knelt, brought her tongue between Lara's legs. She was no Seras, but she knew what she was doing. Lara felt like a piece of meat being prepped on a cutting board, only here the knife was a tongue, and rather than sunder flesh it sent sharp rods of ecstasy through Lara's body. Integra's licking was firm, methodical, tenacious whenever she sensed she'd hit a sweet spot. Lara felt fairly butchered as she came, unable or uncaring enough to stifle her cried. Hermione cooed, she'd been massaging Lara's breast and was now kissing it, teasing the nipple awake between her lips.

"You're lucky," Seras whispered into her ear. "I hope we all get a turn at this."

Lara closed her eyes and laid her head back, wallowing in the sensations stoked by the tongues on her breasts and between her legs. She cried out when she felt a tendril wiggling its way between her buttocks, finding her ass with is nub-covered head. She felt something warm and sticky, goo for lubricant. She cried louder as it entered her, overloading her flesh, blacking out her mind.

She bobbed between the world of wakefulness and the void, the latter never changing, the former always hotter, darker, and greener. A jungle of flesh, soft, salty, sometimes rubbery, slick. Every time she came back to wakefulness it was to experience was to something new, something that stirred her deep down. The three of them, choosing which tendrils to penetrate her with next, in what order. They chose well, blackness followed her nerves being set on fire. Awake again, a double-ended tendril between her and Integra. Seras took it out of them, shared the sucking of it with Hermione.

On and on it went, for how long Lara had no clue, only that she'd lost count of the depraved, delicious acts the four of them committed together. Would it ever end? It had to. Three of them were human, they could only last so long, endure so much.

XXX

Personally, Seras preferred a nice, fat tentacle to Hermione's wand, but the witch seemed to really revel watching the length of it going in and out of another woman's pussy. It was strange, but Seras could appreciate the appeal. Seras had discovered her own kink was being watched. Hermione's eyes were more than enough, but she really liked it when all three stopped to look at her while she did something immensely private. Before, Seras had only ever masturbated inside her coffin, careful not to make a peep lest someone hear and know what she was doing. Now, she liked to think they could see all the way inside her, could see the underside of her very soul as it was turned inside out by a self-induced orgasm.

They were all being turned out, she realized, watching Integra wantonly suckling Lara's breasts, satiating her lust and other nameless feelings. Seras wanted to suck them, too, and probably would in short order, just as soon as she made herself cum with the back-end of the wand. Concentrating, she eeked out an orgasm, held the wand out for Hermione to clean with her mouth. The witch had been touching herself; the taste of Seras' pussy on her wand was enough to tip her over.

Seras stood up, gently inserted the wand into Hermione's ass for safe keeping, and stretched her limbs. Had the whole day passed them by? She saw Lara holding a thick tentacle to her open mouth, holding it with one hand, stroking it mercilessly with the other until it shot a stream of thick, green goo. Lara took the tentacle into her mouth, guzzled the green stuff, some of which had spattered her chest. Integra lapped it up.

God, the sight made Seras wet. And hungry. Mostly hungry. She needed to eat. She seemed to remember guzzling several loads of the green ooze herself, and while it made her feel amazing it had done little to satiate her True Hunger. How it gnawed at her now that she'd finally noticed it. These days it was rare for her to let herself get this hungry. Going without, she'd come to see, was reckless and self-defeating. She was a different person when she was hungry. A dangerous person, one who heard voices. They lived inside of her, the voices; a man she'd loved, a monster she'd despised. She heard them now, screaming.

She went to the altar and knelt. Before her stood the idol from which everything sprouted. She felt its heavy tentacles around her legs, holding them apart while vine-like tendrils crept up her thighs, her buttocks, spread like veins up her back. She hissed as the phallus entered her, unimpeded by her tightening muscles. This one was covered in tough, rubbery nubs. She felt each one as the tentacle they belonged to twisted gently, thrusting itself in and out of her. Another entered her anus, this one twisted like a screw, making her cry out. It felt so good, she never wanted it to stop, never wanted to leave her Master, her God, but she was hungry. So hungry. The voices inside, they were angry.

She had to eat.

She reached for the idol, the god, gripped it by its base, tore it from the altar. She was its resting place now, its new sanctuary. She licked its hard, black, oily surface, found a spot to clamp her jaw around and bit. Her teeth, stronger and sharper for her hunger, penetrated the stone-like flesh, felt the sudden burning rush of godblood in her mouth. She swallowed, kept on swallowing. She didn't need to breathe, otherwise she'd have choked.

She fell, the tentacles holding her dry and brittle, crumbling.

XXX

"Well? Is she dead?"

"Deader than normal? Hard to say."

"She doesn't look dead."

Seras blinked. She was awake, though her eyes had been open the entire time, staring emptily at the holes in the drop ceiling, as if they were stars. She was in a bed, a comfy one. The old medical bay, closed off for years now.

"Stand back, there's no telling..."

Seras found herself strapped down, an IV in her arm delivering blood. To her left, Lara, in a tanktop and panties. Beside her, Hermione, wearing a long button-downed shirt and seemingly nothing else. Integra was clad in a short robe of red silk, a cigar burning between her fingers.

"Are you alright?" said Lara.

Blinking rapidly, Seras looked down between her breasts, over her stomach and naval. Her legs were strapped down, she could see no damage to her flesh or bones. The straps, she saw, were lined with silver bands, inlaid with religious symbols.

"I... what happened?"

"We're not sure," said Integra. "We remember more or less everything up until we all abruptly lost consciousness. When we awoke, the idol was encased in its sarcophagus with you lying on top of it. You've been unresponsive for the past twelve hours."

"Why... why am I still naked?"

They all looked to each other, none had an answer, nor any inclination to provide her with a blanket. She strained at her bonds. Modified though they were, she thought she could break them. While her head swam as it struggled to remember, her body felt amazing. Let them look at it, she thought, them see, let them worship her in all her splendid glory.

"So... we're done, then?" she said. "Is it over?"

"Looks that way," said Hermione. "Except I have no idea what I'm going to tell my superiors at the Ministry."

"I know what I'm going to tell them," said Integra, darkly.

"We're going to keep you here for a little while, to make sure everything is alright," said Lara, her hand gently resting on Seras' naked shoulder. Seras felt a kind of suction, as if something from her desperately wanted to flow into Lara through her fingertips, but didn't know how to do so quite yet. Seras turned her head, her eyes falling on the soft skin, bound and covered by feeble black fabric. She could rip those panties off like they were made of paper, feast on the damp, pink flesh they poorly concealed.

"I still feel strange," said Seras. "Different from before, but still odd, you know?"

All of them nodded almost imperceptibly. "We're woefully ignorant as to how the idol truly works," said Integra. "Shame it wasn't left in its desert hole until all of that was sussed out, but here we are."

"I'm going to run some tests this evening, after you've been awake for a while," said Hermione. "Magical tests, of course. I'm sure we'll understand more before too long."

Seras curled her toes, wondering what delicious tests were in store for her. She hoped they were invasive, degrading. She'd take her fill of it and later return the favor. She could see the shine in Hermione's brown eyes, the naked lust. They all had it, though they'd pretend otherwise, for a while. Eventually they'd come to her for worship, to feel completed, to feel seen. She closed her eyes as the green warmth infused her. Could they see she was wet? "I think I'm going to sleep for a bit," said Seras. "If that's alright?"

She felt their hands on her, all but Integra's, whose gaze was more than enough. They'd come to her later on, Integra first, to feel her, to worship, to idolize.

End.


End file.
